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DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 



DEMOCRACY 
IN EDUCATION 

A SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF 
THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION 



BY 
JOSEPH KINMONT HART, Ph.D. 

Of the Department of Education, Reed College. 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1918 



LA 1-3 



Copyright, 1918, by 
The Centdex Co. 



MAV 24 1918 



LA499116 

-n^-o / 



0" 



p 



TO 
THE DEAR COMRADES 

OF LIFE AND WORK ON 
THE FRONTIER 



PREFACE 

Educational experiment and reconstruction no longer 
need an excuse; all that they need is illumination. This 
will come from a number of sources, one of which must 
be history. It is said that ' ' history proves nothing, ' ' which 
may be true; it is certainly true that history leaves many 
things to disprove. And history does reveal many phases 
of the educational problem which must be made the sub- 
ject of critical investigation. History digs up the prob- 
lems and shows their roots grown deep in old soils. 

But history has been too freely presented as mere trans- 
piring of events; or, if any lessons are to be learned from 
history, those are usually along the line of the ''vanity of 
human wishes. ' ' None the less, either from history or from 
the clear sky, we have become possessed of certain ideals, 
ideals which run counter to some of the assumptions of the 
past, and of certain traditional survivals of the past that 
still remain with us. The modern. Western world pro- 
fesses to have taken democracy as its political goal ; certain 
of the peoples of this Western world profess to have taken 
it also as their social goal; and all of them, or nearly all, 
feel the profound urge of that same ideal as an economic 
and industrial goal. 

Nowhere, however, has democracy been taken as the edu- 
cational goal. It has been, indeed, professed in America; 
but it has never been professed seriously enough to cause us 
to transform our traditional and therefore autocratically- 
inspired educational instrumentalities into actual demo- 
cratic institutions. History has not been interpreted as 



viii PREFACE 

offering comfort to our democratic aspirations. The fate 
of democracies has ahnost always been pictured in dismal 
colors. To be sure, history does not prove that democracy 
will be, or must be, successful ; but history does show that 
human purposes have been powerful determinants of the 
long course of events, and democracy is now our human 
purpose. 

The Great War has become the war for democracy. But 
while big guns may do valiant service for democracy again, 
as not infrequently in the past, it is of the very logic of 
democracy that it must some day be based upon intelli- 
gence and moral freedom, rather than upon force. Hence 
the ultimate problem of democracy becomes the problem 
of education. Two items become important, therefore. 
First, history must be so interpreted that the actual gains 
which democracy has made in the past, and the lasting 
problems which still face democracy, will stand out clearly 
in the consciousness of the democratic citizen, the one as- 
pect of the subject for his cheer, the other to deepen his 
sense of responsibility. Second, education must be seen as 
something more than a school-room task, to be turned 
over to immaturity and impracticality for solution. The 
school must become an actually socialized institution, and 
education must find itself at home once more, as in the 
olden days, in the very life of the community. 

This book attempts to interpret history and contempo- 
rary problems in education from this point of view. It is, 
of course, tentative and subject to continuous reinterpreta- 
tion. It is over brief for such an inclusive aim ; but a book 
in the democratic spirit must leave something to the im- 
agination of the reader. The handling of materials will 
show a frank and avowed interest in the cause of democ- 
racy; just as every history shows some sort of interest 
in some sort of outcome. 



PREFACE ix 

I have had the help of innumerable friends and some 
books. I do not dare enumerate all the friends who have 
offered suggestions. I shall mention two who have given 
critical assistance: President Edward 0. Sisson, of the 
University of Montana, and Mr. Clarence L. Clarke, of the 
University of Chicago, both colleagues of a former time. 
But neither of these is to be blamed for my errors, either 
of fact or of interpretation. My debt to Professor John 
Dewey is apparent on every page. 

In general, this treatment is the result of nearly ten 
years of university teaching in the field of the history of 
education. The majority of the students of the history of 
education echo the remark of a superintendent of schools 
of one of our largest cities: "I don't see that the study of 
history has anything to contribute to the solution of our 
problems, however much it may have of interest in gen- 
eral." But my own excuse for this presentation may be 
illustrated by the statement of a former student who wrote 
in a paper, at the conclusion of the course in the history of 
education: "Up to the time that I took this course I felt 
it was the duty of a cultured individual to sit at the side 
of the road and watch the procession go by ; now I want to 
get into the procession." At a time in the history of the 
world when the demand is upon us all that we "get into the 
procession," this book, with its plea for a larger interpre- 
tation of democracy in education, may find for itself a 
place in the illuminating of the task and in the inspiriting 
of the toil. 

J. K. H. 

Eeed College, 
Portland, Ore. 
March 1, 1918. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XII The Roman Contribution to the Larger 

Folkways 107 

XIII The Educational Situation in the Greco- 

Roman Empire 114 

XIV The Protest of Primitive Christianity . . 120 
XV Christianity Becomes Harmonized to the 

Absolute Empire 130 

XVI The Irruption of the Northern Barbarians 137 
XVII The Completion of the Larger Folkways: 

Medievalism 145 

PART IV 

THE GROWTH OF THE MODERN WORLD 

XVIII The Roots of the Modern Underneath the 

Medieval 161 

XIX Some Foreshadowings of the Modern World 

in the Medieval 168 

XX The First Full Outburst op the Modern 

World Spirit: Renaissance . . . 179 

XXI Birth-Throes op the Modern World . . . 189 

Religious Rebirth: The Reformation . 190 

Intellectual Rebirth: The Rise of 

Science 197 

Political Rebirth: Revolution . . . 208 
Economic Rebirth: The Industrial 

Revolution 217 

XXII Summary: The General Character of the 

Modern World 224 

PART V 

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION IN THE 
MODERN PERIOD 

XXIII The Elements with Which Modern Educa- 
tion Has Had to Work .... 235 



CHAPTER 

XXIV 

XXV 

XXVI 

XXVII 



XXVIII 
XXIX 

XXX 

XXXI 



xxxn 

XXXIII 

XXXIV 

XXXV 

XXXVI 

XXXVII 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Tragedy of Humanism in the Post- 
Renaissance Period 242 

Pansophy as an Educational Program . . 249 

The New Method of Bacon 255 

Sifting the Materials of Education . . . 262 

A. Classical Materialism 265 

B. Social Materialism 269 

C. Sense Materialism 274 

Education as a Process of Mental Discipline 283 
Education as Natural Growth from Within : 

Rousseau 291 

The Educational Problem Becomes Psycho- 
logical 300 

The Psychological Interpretation of Edu- 
cation 309 

A. Pestalozzi 310 

B. Herbart as Educational Psychol- 
ogist 317 

C. Froebel and the Kindergarten Move- 
ment 326 

The Culmination in Evolution 336 

The Efforts of Science to Solve the Prob- 
lems of Education 347 

The Democratic Movement in Education . 361 ' 
Some Concrete Results from History . . 373 
The Fundamental Educational Problem of 

THE Present 386 

The Present as a Part of History .... 400 



PART I 
THE HISTORIC BEGINNINGS OF EDUCATION 



DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

CHAPTER I 

THE MEANING OF HISTORY FOB EDUCATION 

Education has been going on for a long time; our edu- 
cational institutions, practices, and materials are the prod- 
ucts of centuries of accumulation. We are the heirs of the 
ages, and we have inherited much, some of which has 
become unsatisfactory. We have copied from the past ; we 
have used customs and traditions of the centuries ; we have 
built substantial habits. But now we are looking for some- 
thing more adequate to the task. America has been a land 
of inventiveness in the field of mechanics. Should not 
something of that inventive intelligence be available for 
use in the larger social and educational questions that 
confront us ? 

But this inventiveness should not work in ignorance of 
the past. If we are dissatisfied with some of the practices 
and ideals of the past, that is no reason for uncritically- 
discarding all the past. The very possibility of successful 
inventiveness implies real acquaintance with what has gone 
before. If we are to be able to deal with our educational 
problems in a clear and intelligent manner, we must know 
something about how these problems have arisen ; we must 
see the various ways in which the great past has been 
effective in producing the present. We must get a long 

3 



4 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

view of the general course of the world's experience. We 
must begin with : 

The Beginnings of Human History. — We are being told 
that human history began in what is now called the ' ' group 
life ' ' of primitive peoples. All over the world in the past, 
and largely even to-day, we find such groups. They were, 
and are, people who live in very primitive fashion, with- 
out the tools that we have and use, and without the 
knowledge or broad experience which mark "civilized so- 
ciety." Some of these groups still live much like animals, 
in rude shelters, with little clothing, and with precarious 
provision for food. They "get along," except in the pres- 
ence of severe crises, like the failure of all foods, or a fun- 
damental change in their physical environment. As long 
as conditions remain fairly stable they live their simple 
life, and take little account of time ; they are ' ' adapted to 
their environment." Even in the midst of our more civi- 
lized social orders, we can find occasional communities 
which live in much the same fashion ; they are probably cut 
off from the main lines of travel and communication, are 
touched but little by the "current of events," and have 
settled down to a quiet life of fixed custom and habit. 

In the community or group that is truly primitive there 
comes to be an almost complete marking out of the lines 
within which the life of the member may go on. Certain 
activities are proper; others shade off through the rather 
questionable into the highly improper. These ways of 
looking at conduct have not, however, been deliberately 
set up ; they are the products of generations of custom. 
' ' Whatever is customary ' ' is moral ; the immoral is seen in 
any failure to keep to the customary line of action. And 
custom comes to have all the sacredness of a religious rite. 
It is not proper for any one to question the authority of 
the group-customs or traditions ; to do so would be evidence 



MEANING OF HISTORY FOR EDUCATION 5 

of innate disloyalty. Custom is as much a part of the ac- 
tual order of creation as are the mountains or the stars. 

Now in such a group, whether ancient and primitive or 
modern and secluded, as long as the conditions of living 
remain fairly fixed, these social relationships (expressed in 
custom and habit) remain fairly rigid : children have cer- 
tain definite duties to their parents and all older people; 
marriage takes place between individuals having certain 
definite relationships to ea«^h other, and according to a very 
rigid ritual; leaderships in work and war are regulated 
by custom ; moral controls have definite modes of making 
themselves felt; and religious forms receive their full and 
regular share of the time and energy of the group. These 
practices and standards of loyalty, morality, industry, rev- 
erence, and obedience are the natural and rigid results of 
generations of subordination, selection, and survival; and 
they are found everywhere, in greater or less degree, among 
all primitive peoples. This whole range of custom and 
control has been given the expressive name of "Folkways," 
i.e., the ways of the folk.^ This is a convenient term and it 
will be freely used throughout this book to cover this gen- 
eral type of social organization. 

How Life Goes on Under the Folkways. — If, now, we are 
to catch a full view of the development of education from 
the primitive period to the present time, we must come to 
a more complete understanding of the nature of the com- 
mon life under the control of the primitive folkways. We 
have seen that these folkways are not intentionally organ- 
ized; they just "grow up." They dominate the activities 
of the group. Children are born into them and grow up 
subject to them. It has been common to think of the life 
of the primitive man as being free ; but this is, in large part, 
a mistake. His life is freer than that of the modern man's 

1 Siunner, "Folkways." 



6 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

in one respect: he is concerned with fewer kinds of activ- 
ities. But, on the other hand, these fewer kinds of activi- 
ties are regulated by custom and tradition until each be- 
comes a complete ceremonial. The individual member of 
the group is allowed no freedom of initiative in the making 
of new modes of activity, or in the remaking of old modes, 
From birth to death he acts as custom commands, without 
thought as to the reasonableness of the act and without 
care as to the value of it. Habit is the essence of this con- 
trol. Of choice there is almost nothing, and of discrimina- 
tion, nothing at all. 

All the common interests of life are found within the 
group, however, and under the regulation of the folkways. 
Some form of industry is found everywhere, and the modes 
of this industrial life, as well as the rewards, are controlled 
by ancient custom. Political organization, in the sense of 
group control, is here, and its decrees are of hoary ancestry 
and unquestioned authority. Some form of marriage and 
family life is recognized as proper; religious rituals and 
ceremonials give sanction to all proper activities ; and, as 
we shall see, educational practices make sure that the social 
structure of to-day shall be perpetuated in the children of 
the group in their generation. 

It is obvious that the authority of the folkways is definite 
and final. But it may not be so obvious that this authority 
is a great system into which the individual is born, which 
he is bound to accept without question, whose details he 
masters with difficulty, and which remains external to him, 
in the sense that he has had nothing to do with its develop- 
ment, that it does not express his own personal desires 
or impulses, and that he can do nothing to modify it. He 
takes it on from outside himself, he surrenders his own 
life to its control, and he helps to pass it on, unchanged, to 
the next generation. It must be noted, too, that the group 



MEANING OF HISTORY FOR EDUCATION 7 

itself is not free; the present group is but a link in the 
chain of the generations, past, present, and to come. The 
folkways are the possession of the whole group, — the per- 
manent group, not this present group. They are entrusted 
to this present group for its salvation. They must be pre- 
served intact and transmitted to the next generation, for 
the very existence of the next generation will depend upon 
the faithfulness of this transmission. 

It must not be thought, however, that all these distinc- 
tions and conditions are clearly in the minds of the mem- 
bers of the group. They are not. The primitive man 
lives, even as we do, in the midst of conditions and under 
the sway of regulations of which he is only dimly aware. 
The history of civilization is the story of how the race has 
slowly fought its way into some more complete under- 
standing of its own aspirations and the conditions of their 
realization. We may picture primitive man as a being of 
almost incalculable possibilities standing on the levels of 
first achievements, satisfied with the mere beginnings of 
social development, totally ignorant of the larger world 
lying about him which the ages of science will discover, — 
which has become, indeed, commonplace to us of later gen- 
erations. That first level of attainment seemed to the prim- 
itive man an all but complete world. There were, to be 
sure, some mysteries about him which aroused his fears 
and compelled his prayers. But, on the whole, it was the 
world to him. He had probably some ancient story of the 
origin of things: this world was created, and filled up (as a 
finished house is filled with furnishings) with the various 
objects of experience, plants and animals, man and his 
fixed institutions, the folkways and all social relationships. 
"Whatever is, is right." His security depends upon the 
permanence of his world and the finalitj^ of existing ar- 
rangements; and his authority is of the very nature of the 



8 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

universe itself. This is the world of the primitive man; 
this his implicit philosophy. 

The Significance of Crisis in the Primitive World. — We 
have noted that as long as the conditions of living remain 
stable these folkway organizations of society remain fixed 
and final. But the conditions of living do not remain stable 
for very long. Crises of various sorts arise. These crises 
are of three general sorts. First, there may come some 
fundamental change in the character of the physical en- 
vironment. Earthquakes may make the land uninhabi- 
table ; volcanic eruptions may do likewise ; climatic changes 
may destroy the food supplies ; epidemics may destroy the 
populations. Such experiences have been common in the 
history of groups. In the second place, a crisis may be 
precipitated by conflicts between two groups, which would 
lower the food supplies and probably result in wars. In 
the third place, an unusual individual may arise within a 
group and break through the old conditions. But whether 
through the operation of physical changes in the environ- 
ment, through the shock of warring social groups, or 
through the leadership of an unusual individual, crises do 
arise. They are more or less complete in their destructive 
results and in their opening of the way to new develop- 
ments, either toward progress or toward regress ; and they 
thus make possible what is called "history." Of course 
these crises are feared by primitive peoples; they are un- 
desirable experiences. The savage is almost always what 
Professor James called "tender-minded." He wants se- 
curity, freedom from uncertainty; he wants a world in 
which all questions have been answered, which taxes his 
mind in no unusual way, a world from which all change 
has been eliminated, into which eternal changelessness has 
come! 

Now out of the folkways of this primitive world we may 



MEANING OF HISTORY FOR EDUCATION 9 

trace all our modern institutions, our traditions of knowl- 
edge, our prejudices, our superstitions, and our general 
social attitudes. Those ways of organizing the common 
life impressed human experience with qualities that are held 
by some to be ineradicable, giving to "human nature" the 
quality of " unchangeableness. " Such a theory probably 
goes too far; but it is certain that "human nature" has 
been so definitely "set" by those experiences that the most 
profoundly critical shocks are necessary at times to pro- 
duce constructive impression in favor of new modes of 
activity. Thousands of years have been required for the 
task of breaking through the absolute certainties of the 
primitive world into the dawning freedom of modern sci- 
ence with its attitude of endless infjuiry. The crises of 
history have slowly enabled the race to rise to the view that 
security may be less dependent upon "certainty" than 
upon the recognition of the endless round of change; and 
that progress depends upon escaping from "certainties" 
that are_jD.Q._longe_r true. These crises have many varied 
aspects in the social world; they may be economic, civic, 
hygienic, moral, or the like. But whatever the nature of 
their origin, they all represent problems, difficulties to be 
solved. The solution of problems implies the expression 
of a special kind of mental activity: critical intelligence. 
As we shall see in later sections, the most significant out- 
come of the experiences of crisis in human life has been 
the development of intelligence and the gradual building 
up of the intellectual attitude, as over against the attitude 
of habit and custom. History is, as we shall see, the story 
of the continuous movement of the race toward more efifect- 
ive folkway controls, on the one hand, with an occasional 
experience of crisis, involving the possible application of 
critical intelligence in the reconstruction of stable condi- 
tions of existence. 



10 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Extent of the Folkway World. — In the beginning all 
human society was under the dominance of these folkway 
controls. All peoples seem to have passed through the 
folkway stage. Many have risen slightly above this stage 
in the course of centuries, organizing their larger social at- 
tainments upon what we shall later call the ''Oriental" 
level. Some groups have fallen more deeply into the folk- 
way control, until their life has become almost wholly me- 
chanical. Very few peoples have ever escaped from the 
folkways, taking the race as a whole. Geographically, 
whole continents seem still to be held in this sort of 
regimen. Psychologically, all children come up through 
this experience, for most families are still organized in the 
folkway fashion, and must ever be so organized, at least 
to some extent. Most neighborhoods are still largely prim- 
itive, feeling the pressures of old customs and traditions; 
small towns are likely to exhibit this level of development 
in some measure ; city neighborhoods tend to become ' ' pro- 
vincial." There is a "fringe" in the mind of each of us 
that is largely traditional, firmly fixed in habit, as is bound 
to be the case; and there is a large mass of tradition, 
prejudice, custom, and intolerance in the background of 
oui common social organization. All this may seem very 
disagreeable doctrine, but it is the story of humanity's be- 
ginnings, whether of the race or of the child ; and so ob- 
vious is it that it was recognized by Aristotle as having 
fundamental meanings for the development of society. He 
calls attention to various phases of it. Perhaps the most 
significant comment he makes upon the fact is to the effect 
that the individual who otherwise than by mere accident 
is not a member of a social group is either a brute or a 
god ; all human beings are members of groups. 

Escaping from the Folkways. — The race did escape from 
these primitive folkways; that is historic fact. And the 



MEANING OF HISTORY FOR EDUCATION 11 

long story of the struggles by which escape became possible, 
and by means of which new types of social organization 
have arisen, is the substance of our study. Here it is neces- 
sary to point out that escape from such authoritative con- 
trol may mean two very different things. It may mean 
finding the larger freedom of a real world of intelligent 
living, or it may mean opportunity for the complete disin- 
tegration of individual and social living. Both these re- 
sults have appeared in history. Yet there is no reaching 
the former result without running the risk of the latter. 
Freedom involves the chance to go wrong ; a " going right ' ' 
that is imposed from without is not freedom. And some 
ages have been like some individuals: they have struggled 
with uncertainties, having broken with their old customs 
and refusing to return to their former "certainties." 
Habit is strong upon us. Outside of habit lies the un- 
known, peopled with strange creatures, products of igno- 
rance and fear. Yet at times we find ourselves compelled 
to go forward. Columbus, Luther, Galileo conquer their 
fears and dare the unknown. Impulse, energy, and initia- 
tive are strong within us under proper conditions, and we 
leave the old, we remake old institutions, we develop new 
programs, freedom, science, and democracy. 

The first real escape from these old, primitive controls, 
as we shall see in detail later, took place in Greece. The 
Athenian Greeks were compelled by the conditions of their 
living to expand their folkways until these gave way under 
the strain. Confusion followed. The conservatives felt 
that the age was degenerate, lost to all reverence or con- 
trol. And there were those, the Sophists, who took ad- 
vantage of the conditions to make "confusion worse con- 
founded." But always humanity seeks escape from con- 
fusion in the effort to reestablish order. Out of this 
breaking down of the old authority and the effort to set 



12 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

up new controls arose that most wonderful period in the 
history of the race, the Age of Pericles. But internal un- 
certainty was supplemented by external danger. Wars fol- 
lowed among the Greek states, — Sparta against Athens, 
Thebes against Sparta, Macedonia against Thebes, — until, 
under Alexander, there was peace for a moment. During 
periods of peace society has always tended to develop new 
folkways; but the age of Alexander was too brief for this, 
and there were too many diverse peoples to be coordinated. 
After Alexander, confusion again prevailed until the 
"coming of Rome." The Roman Empire introduced an 
age of organization, and Roman Law went far toward 
restoring a condition of universal order, with fixed modes of 
control. Indeed it may be said that, in some respects, this 
tendency went too far ; for one of the results of it was that 
men came to feel that life had lost all its personal value 
and significance, being purely mechanical. Into this me- 
chanical civilization came primitive Christianity, with its 
message of the value of the personal life and the "infinite 
worth of the human soul." A great conflict appeared be- 
tween the old mechanical conception and this new per- 
sonal and moral conception. But the threat of barbarian 
invasion from the North made organization necessary; and 
Christianity took form in the Church, an institution that 
grew to be closely modelled on the plan of the empire 
itself. This more complete organization of the forces of 
civilization helped to carry some of the old ideals and 
values through the ages of barbarism and confusion, and 
helped to make possible the gradual assimilation of the 
Germanic tribes to the old civilization of the South. For 
a thousand years Europe was engaged in this task of con- 
verting the barbarians of the northern woods into citizens 
of the social order. The result of this thousand years of 
effort is seen in what we may call "medievalism," a great 



MEANING OP HISTORY FOR EDUCATION 13 

world order, worked out in theory and largely also in prac- 
tice, inculcated into the habit of the people and made to 
appear as the final statement of the nature of the world and 
human life. This ''medievalism" was, in effect, a new 
and larger "folkway," fitted to the conditions of this new 
age. 

But such a complete statement of the world is possible, 
just as the primitive folkways are possible, only so long as 
the conditions of living remain practically stable. Toward 
the end of the Middle Ages the world of physical existence 
was made over. New continents were discovered, new out- 
lets for human energy found. Finally a new universe, the 
Copernican, took the place of the old universe, the Ptole- 
maic; and "medievalism" disintegrated before the eyes of 
its defenders. Men's interests shifted from "final" things 
to more personal experiences in society and nature. Ref- 
ormation purged religion of some of its older absolutism; 
autocracy found itself challenged by the new political mo- 
tives of democracy ; authority began to break down under 
the challenge of criticism and science ; and old social castes 
began to disappear as serfs became free workers in the 
growing industrial revolution. The Modern Age came in, 
the age of inquiry and science, of freedom and democracy, 
of uncertainty and courage. We are in the midst of that 
age, not at its end. "We are beset with its problems, not 
born into final folkways. We are developing the tools of 
understanding, not learning old answers. 

Yet we tend all too easily either to fall back upon the 
past, and thus practically to bury ourselves once more in 
old folkway conditions, or else we deny all value to the past, 
and by sweeping away all its meanings we destroy ourselves 
on the bleak plains of ignorance. "History proves noth- 
ing," except how history has been made. The student of 
education needs to know human history, not primarily for 



14 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the sake of facts as facts, but for the sake of the light 
thus thrown upon the great problems of civilization that 
still confront us and the processes involved in the solution 
of those problems, — which is the problem of education. 
The folkways know only the kind of education which is 
implicit in all custom-controlled, unthinking, unprogres- 
sive groups. The present must know a different kind of 
education. The intervening centuries have witnessed 
many experiments, many failures, and many advances. 
These are the serious meanings of the study of history, 
meanings not to be denied. 

The story of these experiments, these failures, and these 
advances forms the main trail of this study. This trail 
does not follow a straight line through history, for the race 
has not known whither it was going, and experiment implies 
error and wandering and failure. Nor has this educational 
interest been isolated from other lines of human develop- 
ment. Human life is largely unified, and all lines of in- 
terest are interrelated and interwoven. The history of 
education is the story of the progress of the race in its 
search for new adjustments of its social life in the presence 
of changes in the natural and social environment. These 
adjustments, in so far as they have significance for us, have 
introduced new intellectual elements into the experience 
of the race. There has been a gradual accumulation of 
these intellectual treasures, in the way of the sciences, the 
arts, and the philosophies. In the very midst of these ac- 
cumulations of experiences and their statement in intel- 
lectual terms, there has gradually developed, also, the 
theory of development, the theory of the process of devel- 
opment, the philosophy of development. That is to say, we 
are not only becoming aware, as the folkways were not, of 
the fact that civilization changes ; we are coming to an un- 
derstanding of the methods of those changes, until we seem 



MEANING OF HISTORY FOR EDUCATION 15 

in a fair way to an actual mastery of those conditions and 
their ultimate control. At any rate, the history of educa- 
tion, which begins in the common, customary unintelli- 
gence of the primitive world, shows enough development 
of understanding and mastery of the conditions of devel- 
oping experience to point hopefully to the coming of a day 
of actual intelligence, of science and control, of freed hu- 
manity and democracy; not, indeed, as final terms in a 
finished process, but as the moving ideal in the continuous 
struggle of humanity, an ideal not lightly won or held, 
easily lost, kept for the inspiration of the largely-remaining 
task only by the exercise of that "eternal vigilance" which 
is the price not alone of liberty but of all our other com- 
mon democratic aspirations. 

We turn now to the discussion of the actual processes of 
education in the primitive folkways, and then, breaking 
through their binding customs, we follow the trail until we 
come out upon the present, into the very midst of our 
social and educational problems, with the expectation that 
these studies will give us a clearer perspective as to the 
nature of those problemis, and, therefore, real help in their 
solution.^ 

1 Bibliographical materials for further reading or study along 
these lines are noted in the appendix. 



CHAPTER II 

THE METHODS OF EDUCATION IN THE WORLD OF THE FOLKWAYS 

If, now, we have come to have some understanding of 
the nature of the first organization of society under these 
folkway-bonds, we are in a position to undertake a study of 
the ways in which education went on in that group life. It 
is important that we should see these things rather clearly, 
because all our human progress has come out of these old 
conditions and because very much of that old follnvay 
life still clings to us. We have not yet escaped fully into 
a life of organized intelligence; we are still largely dom- 
inated by old folkway traditions and customs. We move 
slowly out and up from those lowly beginnings. Education 
is the most effective help in this long process. And if we 
are to understand the problem of education in the present, 
and that means the problem of civilization in the present, 
we must see how education began in the customs and habits 
of the primitive world, and then follow its essential wind- 
ings and struggles into the complicated situation of to-day. 
The present is largely the accumulation of the folkways 
and folkway-changes of the past. If we are ever to escape 
from mere custom, mere folkway, into a life intelligently 
organized, we must learn the meaning of and the persist- 
ence of habit and custom in individual and social living. 

The Race Educated by its Experiences. — If we look 
quietly through the long story of history, we shall certainly 
see that the race has gradually developed its present accu- 
mulations of inventions, institutions, and knowledge. 
These were not all in existence in its primitive period. 

16 



EDUCATION IN THE FOLKWAY WORLD 17 

Sometimes history seems to be presented from the opposite 
point of view, as if, indeed, all these things were in exist- 
ence (probably under cover somewhere), waiting to be 
found. Rather it would seem that men have developed 
the knowledge that we now have through long centuries of 
bitter experience. Inventions have come out of great neces- 
sities, at least in some measure; and institutions have 
grown and changed through the agonies of revolution and 
rebellion. The life of the race has not been easy. The race 
has been gradually educated by its experience. Hardship, 
suffering, poverty, famine, pestilence, — these are common 
aspects of the primitive world ; but all experience educates 
by building up habit more rigidly or breaking it down. 
Victory and defeat, error and truth, mistakes and failures, 
certainties and fears, guesses, doubts and hopes, hatreds, 
animosities and wars, prosperity and adversity, the sim- 
ple, the terrible, and the sublime in nature, — in short, all 
the ordinary and extraordinary experiences of the peoples 
of the earth have in their time modified culture and made 
the world move on. And out of these accumulating ex- 
periences, which have come to all sorts of groups and peo- 
ples everywhere, the race has gradually built up its folk- 
ways, its institutions; it has organized its inventions; it 
has accumulated its knowledge. 

Occasionally great leaders have appeared, — prophets, 
poets, builders of empire, saviors of the people; and these 
have had extraordinary influence upon their times. They 
have helped to make life larger and better; but usually, 
also, they have helped to make the world of custom more 
rigid, for there have been few men in the history of the 
race who were big enough to put the good of humanity 
above their own fame or power. Around them have gath- 
ered new customs and traditions, — or some new institution 
has grown up to bear their name and to bind men more 



18 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

completely to some old folkway type of living. This has 
been especially true in the field of religion, as witness the 
effect of the life and work of Mahomet and many others, 
East and West. Usually such leaders either pose as being 
"supernatural," or around their memories, after their 
death, the legend of "divinity" grows up; and this makes 
all they did the more sacred, the more binding upon the 
race; also a certain permanence is secured for their tradi- 
tions. Still, from age to age, even these leaders are 
eclipsed, and the folk-experience grows and human nature 
comes to fuller understanding of itself, realizing new mean- 
ings and taking upon itself new obligations and responsi- 
bilities. 

Under the control of these old folkway customs men are, 
for the most part, the mere playthings or victims of ex- 
perience, suffering "the slings and arrows of outrageous 
fortune" with a sort of blind faith that the next world will 
make up for the evils suffered in this. The folkwaj^s are 
the world for them ; what happens in the folkways is neces- 
sary ; there are no means of understanding that men might 
escape from such conditions into a larger sort of world. 
But as we go on we shall see how, under pressure of events, 
men come to search out experiences, to determine whether 
they are really necessary. For example, there was a time 
(not very remote, even now) when it was assumed that 
such an experience as typhoid fever was inevitable, one of 
the things that, if it came, had to come. But now only the 
most primitive mind accepts that view; typhoid fever is 
not inevitable and it is gradually being eliminated from 
the earth. So the "inevitable" ceases to exist for us; but 
it was of the very essence of experience in the folkways. 

It is a long way from the fixed life of the primitive world 
to the gradually controlled world of to-day. It represents 
the gains of the ages; it represents the painful emergence 



EDUCATION IN THE FOLKWAY WORLD 19 

of the power to think ; it means that men have determined 
to give up being the victims of experience, and have begun 
to feel the assurance that life can be made intelligent and 
subject to reason. That is the long story of science, the 
education of the race which runs in ever-widening current 
down through history to the present. We are to follow 
along its shores, from its beginnings in old stagnate pools 
of custom and tradition. It may be we shall catch some 
glimpse of the great ocean toward which its course seems 
tending. 

The Earliest Forms of Education. — We must examine a 
little more closely just how the group is educated under the 
folkways. We are so accustomed to the thought that edu- 
cation is something that goes on in school-rooms that we 
may be surprised to find no school, in our sense of that 
word, among primitive groups. We may even decide that 
in that case there was no education there. But that would 
be a profound mistake, just as it would be a mistake to 
assume that children to-day have had no education before 
they start to school, or that the summer vacation has no 
educational significance. Indeed there is some reason for 
believing that the most effective education, that is to say, 
the education that most effectively modifies character and 
conduct, is that which comes to children in unconscious 
and unintentional ways, such as in play and other forms 
of activity. At any rate, a very definite educational effect 
was secured in the primitive folkway life through these 
out-of-school types of activity. We must look a little more 
closely at them. 

The general statement of these educational activities is as 
follows : the children of the group must grow up to become 
the men and women of the group, if the group is to continue 
to exist. And the children of the group do thus grow up, 
and they do learn how to perform the customary work- 



20 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

activities of the adult life by participating directly in them 
as children, and especially by playing at them. The play- 
life of childhood becomes the work-life of the adult years. 
The children live out in play what the adults are perform- 
ing as work. The life of the group goes on, and the future 
life of the group is provided for. The children imitate, 
they are absorbed into the common activities; they share 
the group activities as far as possible actually, and they go 
beyond present possibilities by means of play and imita- 
tion. They even share the group excitements and emotions 
in the presence of dangers; they hear the tales of wai: 
and adventure and they relive those tales in imagination; 
they see the effects of hardship, danger, or death; they 
share in the celebrations of victory; they are thrilled by 
the stories that returning hunters or warriors tell when 
the group is gathered around the common fire after the 
work of the day is done. These primitive children live in 
the very midst of this group life. Its industry, its polities, 
its morality, its religion, its social demands wrap them 
round about from infancy, molding their growth and be- 
coming their education. Thus their education is not of 
books, or schools; it is not bookish and remote from life; 
it is not intellectual and academic. It is immediately use- 
ful, easily understood, valuable in the life of the group. 
It is social, because it initiates the child into the group life 
and need ; it is moral, because it helps the child to identify 
his individual self with the world-interest ; it is civic, for it 
prepares the child for the responsibilities of the adult 
world ; and it is thoroughly religious, for it helps the child 
to enter into that ideal life of the group which is over and 
above the merely sordid concerns of the day. 

The Aims of This Folkway Education. — The deepest aim 
of this education is, of course, the perpetuation of the 
group. In this regard the individual does not count. 



EDUCATION IN THE FOLKWAY WORLD 21 

What he may want or desire is not considered; the life of 
the group is the only important fact, even for the individ- 
ual. Among the Esquimaux, when food supplies are low 
and some must be sacrificed to save the group, the old 
men and women must go. The group alone is worth while, 
and the old men and women have ceased to be useful. 
Among other primitive peoples whose security depends 
upon their strength in war, for example, the ancient Spar- 
tans, imperfectly formed children are exposed to death. 
The group alone is worth while, and in such a group a 
crippled child will be a drag upon the energies of the 
strong. 

These primitive groups usually live within fairly narrow 
areas, and their customs and habits become adapted to 
natural conditions that are fairly constant and stable. 
Long ages may pass for such a group, until their activities 
become as certain as the rising and setting of the sun. 
Their industries have very definite routine; their social 
organization develops fixed modes of habit ; certain individ- 
uals exercise authority ; certain gods are worshipped in 
definite forms of ritual ; and custom determines just what 
is, and what is not, moral. These modes of life have not 
been deliberately thought out. They have just grown up ; 
they have survived because thay have protected the life 
of the group. In the long struggles for existence which 
every group has undergone some groups have perished be- 
cause they could not thus find proper adaptation; others 
have survived because they did find how to adapt them- 
selves to the conditions. But this success was probably not 
largely intelligent. It was a happy accident in the main, 
and later experience has made it a fixed fact. But the 
success has been that of the group. The individual, left 
to himself, would perish. The group must be cherished, 
even for the sake of the individual. Group custom, there- 



22 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

fore, must dominate individual impulse; group habits must 
be ingrained in individual action until the life of the group 
is assured from all conflict with individual will. The 
group must live, and all that interferes with this primary 
fact must be thrown out. To this the individual must con- 
sent in order that he himself may have life at all. In fact, 
in this primitive social order the individual scarcely may 
be said to exist; he gets his whole significance from the 
existence of the group. Without the group he would not 
be able to exist or to signify. The long story of education 
is the story of the gradual emergence of the individual as 
having significance in his own life and right. 

The Content of This Folkway Education. — Education, 
then, goes on in such a folkway world in the midst of and 
by means of these common elemental factors of life. There 
is no school in our sense of the term, i.e., there is no learn- 
ing of lessons of an abstract and remote nature out of books 
written in other groups and remote from the common ex- 
periences of the learner. Learning here goes on in the 
midst of actual living, and is made up of the elements of 
actual life. It is industrial. Every group must have 
some means of subsistence, and the children share in these 
practical activities from the first; they learn to do the 
things that practical necessity demands. It is social. It 
helps to perpetuate the life of the group by making the 
children share in the sense of group-welfare, and by mak- 
ing real those social values that are implicitly prized by 
the group. It is never merely theoretical, in our sense of 
that word, but always infuses its activities with the feeling 
of reality of the group existence. Yet behind all these 
practical activities there is a sort of dim or shadowy animus, 
motive, or philosophy, which may not be wholly ignored. 

In addition to the common activities of work and play 
which the children share, there is a wealth of story, tradi- 



EDUCATION IN THE FOLKWAY WORLD 23 

tion, legend, myth, the accumulation of ages of hunting 
and warfare, — hardships endured, work planned and ex- 
ecuted or defeated, adventures with beasts and spirits, 
plottmgs of the enemy, religious tales and ceremonials, and 
all the experiences of the common feast. All these enter 
into the material of education. The interests of the chil- 
dren are controlled, of course, by these interests of adult 
life. Their attentions, i.e., the avenues of their growth, are 
held by the folkways, the machinery of adult life; by the 
work, the ceremonials, the adventures of the adult life, and 
the demands of the elders of the group. They are getting 
ready to be elders themselves; that is to say, their educa- 
tion is completely vocational. 

The Entrance into Membership in the Adult Life. — We 
have seen that the individual is subordinated to the group, 
and that all the common processes of experience tend to 
impress the child with the reality of this super-individual 
life. But individual impulse is very erratic and unac- 
countable; and the life of the group is so very important 
that it would probably not be safe to rest the future of the 
group entirely upon the accumulated experiences of child- 
hood alone without further guarantees. Somehow the chil- 
dren must be made to feel the sacredness of their trust ; the 
future of the group must become to them as sacred as their 
own individual lives. Rather, the future of the group must 
become their own future life and being. Hence these folk- 
way values must be more intimately their own than even 
years of habit would seem to make them; they must be 
identified with their own very lives through some deep and 
unforgetable emotional experience. The children, espe- 
cially the boys, must take these customs upon themselves 
as their own real life; they must internalize them; they 
must identify their own dawning social impulses with them. 
Their hopes for activity and enterprise must become one 



24 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

with the activities and enterprises of their group. They 
must eliminate from their lives all else and cleave only to 
these, until their very souls declare : * ' These customs are 
my life ; these people are my people. I am o£ them ; their 
enemies are my enemies, their friends my friends, their 
tasks my tasks, their evils my evils, their gods my gods." 
The folkways must be made to ' ' set in, ' ' until all possibility 
of individuality is lost in these social necessities of his 
group. Then can the youth take his place in the councils 
of the elders as a trusted man, his education complete, him- 
self now one of them, knowing absolutely nothing but the 
accepted principles and purposes of the group. How is 
all this accomplished? 

In our modern society initiation ceremonies are rather 
common, but they belong to small organizations; they are 
not the activities of the civic group as a whole. In the 
primitive folkway, on the other hand, the child's education 
was completed by some large public ceremonial in most 
cases. He was put through a more or less elaborate initia- 
tion ceremonial, of which the elders of the tribe were the 
directors and in which the secrets of the tribe were re- 
vealed to him in such ways as to produce profound and 
lasting impressions upon him. These ceremonials were not 
deliberately worked out; they gradually accumulated out 
of old practices and were kept up through many generations 
because they helped to keep the group together. They 
helped the group to survive in the struggle for existence. 
The method usually employed was to give the youth a 
period of fasting, even of suffering, which would induce 
dreams and visions. In these visions spirits would ap- 
pear to him, from among which, perhaps, a Guardian Spirit 
might be revealed; sometimes his Totem was selected in 
these experiences. All this was made as impressive as pos- 
sible by being staged in some lonely hut in the solitude of 



EDUCATION IN THE FOLKWAY WORLD 25 

the woods. Then, when he had been thus profoundly 
stirred and while his emotions were still vivid, the secrets 
of the group were revealed to him, and with weird, fan- 
tastic music and action he was actually caught up into 
the very feeling of the elders. In some cases torture of 
the flesh helped to impress this moment upon him as the 
supreme experience of life. At any rate, the experience 
became profoundly impressive and the average youth never 
recovered from it; he was "swallowed up in the group." 
He was accepted by the group ; he accepted the group ; and 
from that time forward the life of the group was safe with 
him. He would die rather than see the group suffer harm ; 
and he will see to it that the future copies as exactly as 
possible the past that has been revealed to him. 

It should be noted that this initiation experience has 
broad social significance. It initiates the youth into the 
industrial order of the group ; henceforth he has a definite 
part to perform in the economic struggle. It gives him also 
his civic place, his position in the political order. He finds 
by this means his social standing, and above all it is for him 
a great religious confirmation. All these things taken to- 
gether make up the educational experience, and this cere- 
mony represents the completion of childhood and the be- 
ginning of manhood. His education is over; his work has 
begun. In the modern world mere fragments of this old 
experience are all that remain of it. Actual "initiation 
ceremonies" now belong almost wholly to particular or- 
ganizations, usually of a secret sort; the whole community 
now no longer initiates its youth into the community life. 
It allows him to find his way as best he can. He "gets a 
job," but the community is fairly careless as to the fact. 
He "comes of age" and begins to vote, but little attention 
is given the fact. He may put on the clothes of adult life 
and "enter society," but that is his own private affair. 



26 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

He may be "converted" and join some religious sect, but 
that has very little social meaning in the old folkway sense. 
If he should go to school, especially to high school, and 
come to graduation time, the community as a whole would 
come out to rejoice with him at commencement time. This 
event comes nearest representing the old community inter- 
est in the future of the youth. But, on the other hand, this 
graduation experience is, perhaps, the most barren of social 
significance. It means little in the way of assurance of 
industrial position ; it has no particular civic result ; it does 
not mean a religious outlook; but it may have some value 
in opening the doors into ''society." In the folkway world 
this initiation experience was all of these things. It was 
a unitary, highly emotional, deeply impressive experience, 
under the control of the wise men of the group and open- 
ing the way of the youth into all the life of the group, thus 
making sure that the group life would be safeguarded in 
coming generations. With us it has been broken up into 
fragments, each of which is profoundly important and in- 
teresting to the individual, but the community does not see 
them in their broad social meaning, and the youth as 
surely misses their inclusive social significance. 

Values and Limitations of this Folkway Education. — 
The values of this primitive education are very real. It is, 
as we have seen, social, civic, vocational, moral up to the 
levels of the moral life of the group, and it is completed 
in a great emotional experience. Education of this sort 
is the highest concern of the community, for it assures the 
life of the community. It becomes, also, the chief voca- 
tion of childhood, not consciously so, perhaps, but in a very 
real sense. The children find their real life in this gradual 
emergence into the full life of the adult. The youth enters 
into its deepest experiences because he thereby identifies 



EDUCATION IN THE FOLKWAY WORLD 27 

himself with all that seems high and good to him. He 
realizes the biggest things in his imagination ; he completes 
his own life in this complete life of his little world. It is 
a narrow world no doubt, but a complete world, and it is all 
that he has any means of knowing or desiring. 

Over against these very real values we must note some 
lasting limitations. Folkways grow up under rather rigid 
conditions of living. The group is adapted to these condi- 
tions. As long as those conditions remain rigid the group 
remains fixed in its customs; the folkways become as rigid 
as is the bed of a river along the mountain side. This fixed 
life instinctively resists all encroachments from without, 
and all insidious tendencies toward change, if any arise, 
from within. Its industries become rigid, its social forms 
arbitrary, its morality purely customary, its religion wholly 
formal. And, back of this practical rigidity of the com- 
mon life, there slowly emerges a sort of corresponding met- 
aphysical rigidity, a kind of common philosophy which 
assumes that this folkway world is the real world. The 
world was created just this way, including these customs 
and traditions, and everything is just as it should be. 
''Whatever is, is right." It is the common, universal, 
human story. A level of living has been worked out which 
fits in with the conditions of the environment. This level 
becomes rigidly organized, rounded out, satisfactory. It 
ceases to change perceptibly; it forgets all past changes; 
it denies all change ; it is become complete habit organized 
into a changeless environment, if such a thing can be. 

The innermost characteristic, therefore, of this folkway 
education is its rigid certainty. It is habit, custom, tradi- 
tion, in supreme measure ; and these rest upon the implicit 
belief that the physical world is as unchangeable as are 
these folkways. Quiet, security, certainty — these are the 



28 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

things longed for in the folkways. Here is realized the 
reality of an old falsehood : ' ' Happy is the land that has 
no history ! ' ' 

But the history of education will carry us far out and 
away from these certainties and finalities, through the prob- 
lems and the uncertainties of the historic movements down 
to the present day. We shall see innovation take the place 
of habit here and there, invention take the place of custom, 
and science strive to overcome tradition. "We shall see the 
conception of evolution gradually overturn the old folkway 
beliefs in the fixed and rigid order of the world, until we 
come to our own age with its problems, its tasks, and its 
tremendous hopes. Over against the education that is cer- 
tain of itself, with its knowledge that must not be ques- 
tioned and its emotional impressions that deliver the soul of 
youth into the keeping of the past, will arise the educational 
problem of to-day : ' ' How can education go on at all in a 
world that is so little sure of i+self, so uncertain, so restless, 
as is this modern world?" It will become obvious that 
the educational programs of that folkway world will 
scarcely meet the needs of the restless, uncertain present. 
Yet it may also become clear that there is still so much 
of the old folkway temper in this modern world that we 
cannot wholly cut ourselves off from the attempt to under- 
stand that past. 

Before, however, we take up the long thread of the story 
of that historic struggle by which the world has escaped, 
in some measure, from the folkways into a new sort of 
world-organization, we must turn aside for a moment to see 
how these old folkways can become still more completely 
rigid as the framework of a somewhat different order of 
society. We must look into the nature of the Oriental type 
of civilization and education. This will help us to appre- 
ciate more fully the fundamental problem of this folkway 



EDUCATION IN THE FOLKWAY WORLD 29 

life: How may the race escape from tlie folkways into a 
more intelligent and broader world-life without at the 
same time losing the unquestionable goods that were de- 
veloped in the folkway age? 

We turn to a consideration of the Oriental type of folk- 
ways. 



CHAPTER III 

EDUCATION IN THE MORE COMPLEX FOLKWAYS OF THE 
ORIENTAL WORLD 

We have called the general organization of society in the 
primitive world by the general name of the Folkways, and 
we have seen how these folkway customs and traditions 
control the education of the young among primitive groups. 
We must now see that in general, in all these very primi- 
tive groups, these customs and traditions are all unwritten, 
unrecorded; they live in the memories of the elders, in the 
rituals and ceremonials of the group, in the suggestion of 
sacred objects, and in the habits of the age. Written lan- 
guage has not yet arisen. Hence all these traditions are 
subject to the imperceptible changes that surely occur in 
even the most rigid world, variations which come about in 
the process of transmission from one generation to the 
next. Primitive men pride themselves upon the exactness 
of their memories, but usually they have no means of check- 
ing up their recitals, save by the memory of some other 
individual. More serious variations will occur through 
changes in the meanings of words that come because of 
modifications in the conditions of living. Of course these 
changes are usually unnoticed, and a suggestion that 
they were occurring would be resented by all loyal mem- 
bers of the group. 

Now these changes lead in two possible directions. The 
one, which though exceedingly interesting must not detain 
us here, leads toward a more narrowly physical and ac- 
cordingly a more narrowly social existence, as the condi- 

30 



EDUCATION IN THE ORIENTAL WORLD 31 

tions of living become more and more precarious for any 
particular group. Group degeneration is not an unknown 
phenomenon. But our path leads elsewhere. 

The Rise to the So-called Oriental Level of Culture. — 
The other direction which may result from these uncon- 
scious changes in the primitive folkways is that toward a 
more inclusive and extensive organization of the social 
world. In the more fertile valleys, like the Nile and the 
Euphrates or on the great plains of India and China, popu- 
lations gradually increase until group presses upon group 
iu very uncomfortable fashion, demanding some actual 
revolution in the organization of life. This is history. 
Wars are the first solution of the problem : the elimination 
of the weaker group. In the primitive world weakness is 
almost a crime. But the desolations of war pall even upon 
the savage, and not infrequently he takes refuge in some 
sort of a "treaty" or inter-group understanding. This 
means, of course, that his old group isolation is broken 
down, that his group becomes part of a larger organization 
similar to a "nation" or federation of groups. Such a 
"nation" occupies, of course, a much larger territory 
than the old group knew, a territory too large to be known 
by every member of the "nation." The total population 
of this new federation may also be too large to be known 
individually by every member. Hence, in this larger social 
organization there are at least two conditions not present 
in the older, smaller group: a habitat not fully known, 
and a membership not personally acquainted as a whole. 
Yet it is important that within this larger "nation" some- 
thing of an actual community of life should be felt. To be 
sure, the existence of the old customs and traditions of each 
particular group stands in the way of this complete fusion, 
for most of these old folkways will run on in the same old 
ways, even though something of their rigidity and sacred- 



32 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ness has been lost through these wider contacts. Men do 
not give up their customs as soon as they find out they are 
not final; habit is too strong for such an outcome. The 
task of imposing, or developing, a common life involves 
great difficulties. But social pressures have produced such 
results. Something of a common life appears, the "na- 
tion" really arises, and on one stage of its development it 
presents the characteristics of the Oriental world. 

Development of the New Folkways. — In such a "na- 
tion" there are, as we have just seen, accumulations of old 
group-customs. These probably have some relationship to 
each other, as the very fact that these groups have come 
together shows that there was some underlying likeness of 
custom or tradition. Still they must all be harmonized. 
Traditions must be adjusted to each other so as not to jar 
too greatly on neighboring groups; industrial, civic, and 
religious activities must be reorganized to fit into these 
larger conditions of living. There are thus many possi- 
bilities of conflict. Now conflict has three possible out- 
comes: it may end in war, in which case the "nation" is 
disrupted; it may lead to thinking, a very unlikely out- 
come and one which only one nation, as we shall see, ever 
really adopted; or it may lead to a sort of slurring over 
of the more flagrant differences, permitting the develop- 
ment of a sort of common life in which each group keeps 
the most sacred parts of its old traditions, unwittingly 
surrendering much they earlier held quite sacred. Of 
course many wars of a minor sort may arise, and there 
may be some rudimentary thinking, but the outcome has 
usually been a sort of mutual adjustment of a practical sort 
in which much is forgotten on all sides. 

Now in the midst of this larger organization of these 
old, lesser groups there must emerge some sort of actual 
embodiment of this growing unity. This new common life 



EDUCATION IN THE ORIENTAL WORLD 33 

must be bound together by means of communication of 
some sort, demanding a common language. It must be 
made to conform to certain common standards of loyalty, 
demanding tests of ' ' patriotism ' ' ; and usually it must find 
a common motive of religious emotion, demanding tests of 
''orthodoxy." But a language that is to be common to 
groups of people who are not personally acquainted and 
who vary greatly in experience must become a written lan- 
guage ; and a test of loyalty that is to bind all such diverse 
types together must be selected out of whatever is common 
in the total experience of the several groups and must be 
given some fairly permanent form, i.e., it must be written 
down; while the common motive to religious expression 
must have the reality of the old folkway traditions, i.e., it 
must be material selected out of the varied folkways of these 
varied groups. 

That is to say, these very social developments both im- 
ply and demand the invention of written language, the 
organization of specialized government, and the appearance 
of a literature that shall preserve the standards and vitali- 
ties of the old folkways in written form. Of course these 
old traditions, coming from many sources, will be contra- 
dictory, even in describing what is obviously a common ex- 
perience of separate groups. This will involve criticism 
of the traditions, "harmonizing," and various forms of 
accommodation. But eventually a sort of common litera- 
ture will have appeared, bringing conventional standards 
of culture which will be binding upon all the people of all 
the groups. The folkways have been made over to suit the 
needs of this larger group, they have been written down 
in unmistakable form, and standards of "orthodoxy" have 
begun to appear. These new inventions have bound the 
world in a more rigid system than the old. Old China is 
an excellent illustration of this outcome. 



34 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Education under these Oriental Folkways. — The task of 
education in such an enlarged social world will obviously 
be different from that which we have been studying in the 
preceding section. The world in which this larger "na- 
tion" lives is too extensive to be known by all the people 
from first-hand experience. The member of such a group 
cannot know his world in a perceptual way, i.e., by merely 
keeping his ej^es and ears open. If he comes to know it at 
all, it must be in a conceptual way, i.e., by getting the ex- 
periences of other men and trying to understand what they 
mean. This calls for a new type of understanding, the 
understanding of something you have not personally ex- 
perienced. It is illustrated by books. We read of things 
we have never experienced and try to discover what those 
things would mean to us. It is like the lessons in school. 
We study things that seem unreal, but the books tell us they 
exist. Hence we try to understand. And these wider folk- 
ways are just of that sort. They find their proper state- 
ment in the literature that has grown up ; they bring to the 
children much unfamiliar material which must be commit- 
ted to memory. Just because they are wider in their range 
of materials, they must be much more rigid in their methods 
of learning ; and since they cannot be fully understood, they 
must be the more implicitly obeyed in a purely literal way. 
They will thus become universal rules of conduct, binding 
upon all members of the "nation" and adapted to the va- 
ried conditions of life. But they will be taught by a special 
class of "teachers," the accepted and authorized inter- 
preters, who will declare the meaning in disputed cases. 
They will become the laws of the country, the "common 
law," standards of conduct, or of manners, or of taste. 
They will be useful in the courts as standards of loyalty or 
patriotism, in religious affairs as standards of "ortho- 
doxy," and in the schools, for now there will, of course, be 



EDUCATION IN THE ORIENTAL WORLD 35 

schools, they will be useful in an intellectual way as a 
means of grading the intellectual abilities of the people. 
The task of learning will be very hard, and few will attain 
to mastery. The rest will be graded by the distance they 
are able to travel on the road to mastery. 

These written customs and traditions will become more 
or less sacred, to be literally followed. This literalness will 
give rise to vexatious questions of interpretation. But the 
master-intellects will become the official interpreters, and 
they will slowly extend the bearings of these writings until 
the time may come when every practicable detail of life 
will have become subject to minute definition, with a rule 
prescribed in the sacred or near-sacred writings. The edu- 
cated man will be the man who knows the literature of 
these recorded folkways, and, as in old Judea, it will be said 
of the common man, ' ' Cursed is the man who knows not the 
Law." 

But it must not forgotten that all this is but folkway, 
the accumulated folkways of the various groups out of all 
their various pasts. There is no intelligent theory of life in 
it, no conscious program, no real science. These are but 
accumulated "rules of thumb" which, since they have 
never been subjected to vital criticism, have gradually 
hardened into these fixed routines which reduce all life to 
a round of stated observances. The range of life may be 
wider than under the old oral customs of the little group, 
the scope of life may be a little broader, but the significance 
of life is just as definite and unchangeable as in that older 
order. There is here no free intellectual life to criticise 
custom by means of ideals or to rescue practice from the 
domain of habit. Authority, written in the books and 
made sacred by hoary tradition, controls all the vital con- 
cerns of life. 

The School. — Since this Oriental type of society is too 



36 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

extended and too complex to be " taken on " by the average 
individual in the common processes of experience, the 
process of education requires a new piece of machinery. 
The school comes into existence. This means that written 
books are studied, a special class of teachers develops, les- 
sons are set, hours are spent in study, other hours in reci- 
tation, examinations are passed or failed — the whole series 
of events so well known in our modern world goes on. The 
best illustration of this is seen in the old Chinese system, 
where its full artificiality and remoteness from actual life 
appear. Here the school inculcated the tradition, the 
teacher was the real statesman, and the scholar the up- 
holder of the permanent folkways. The method was mem- 
orizing and repetition. Fixed forms of expression were 
practiced until they became utterly automatic, and the mind 
was slowly tortured into complete conformity with the an- 
cient patterns. But few could go far in such a system. 
The children were scattered all along the years, only a few 
remaining to the very end, to justify the ways of institu- 
tions to the coming generations. The old-time school repre- 
sents the climax of ingenuity in setting up the conditions 
of intellectual "struggle for existence" in which many are 
called but few chosen. 

Dominant Influences. — The influences of custom domi- 
nate all activities on this Oriental level ; and this really 
means the influences of religion. In many instances, per- 
haps in most, such a nation conceives itself as a ''chosen 
people," a "central kingdom," or something of the sort. 
Custom and religion support the doctrine "Whatever is, is 
right," and economic and political institutions in turn 
support religion and custom. The past is sacred ; the pres- 
ent and the future must "copy fair the past." In this 
way these larger folkways become merely blind alleys, lanes 
with no outlet, into which countless millions of the peoples 



EDUCATION IN THE ORIENTAL WORLD 37 

of the earth have wandered. There is no real hope in these 
folkways, for they reach an inflexible limit of growth along 
all lines. Nothing but some profound shock, — such as has 
recently come to China, — the shock of some great, progres- 
sive civilization, can shake them loose from their fixed 
ways and give them the vision of a new social order. 

The failure of such social organizations lies in this : they 
developed many "rules of thumb" of admirable value, but 
they merely accumulated them. They never developed the 
power to criticise them, to reorganize them, to make the new 
a means of escape from the old. That is to say, they never 
developed a theory of society by means of which to criticise 
their old practices. Hence they had no possible means of 
criticising their accumulations of ideas and systems. They 
became the victims of this mere accumulation of rules and 
systems, like some old householder whose attic is filled 
with all sorts of ancient, unusable implements and tools.. 
Progress consists not merely in getting more implements; 
it consists in throwing away some of the old ones. But 
this must be done not at random, but with actual regard to 
the uses of the tools that are kept. This involves a type of 
critical intelligence not common in the world and prac- 
tically unknown in the folkway stages of experience. 

Education among the Hebrews. — Concrete illustration 
of this Oriental type of education may be found in many 
nations, both modern and ancient. But in the further 
course of this discussion we shall come upon certain great 
contributions from the Hebrew people, and the Hebrews 
offer an excellent example of this level of development. 
Hence we shall use this nation for a little further study of 
this type of folkway. Variations may be found in Baby- 
lon, India, China, Egypt, and Persia; but these will 
largely be variations in detail and not in essential prin- 
ciple. 



38 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

The Hebrews began as a number of tribes in the deserts 
of Arabia. Various types of pressure forced them grad- 
ually into a sort of federation, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, 
by means of which they learned a sort of community of 
life. Legends of a common ancestor helped them in 
this, and the story of an inheritance which had been 
lost, but which they were to find again, the "promised 
land," also helped. Yet, despite these helps and these 
pressures, they never became a complete nation. For a 
few years, under David and Solomon, there was a minimum 
of internal strife. But this was merely a truce. Imme- 
diately after Solomon the effort broke down and the "na- 
tion" broke into two groups, the Ten Tribes of Israel and 
the Two Tribes of Judah. Two centuries later the larger 
of the two was swept out from the currents of history, be- 
coming the mysterious Lost Tribes of Israel. Judah, of 
the two tribes, alone remained. 

The traditions, or folkways, of these original twelve 
tribes were preserved in the writings of the remaining 
groups. Judah as a "nation" survived Israel a century 
and a quarter, finally falling before the destructive forces 
of westward-moving empire. In the years of the ' ' Captiv- 
ity ' ' they sat down by the waters of Babylon and ' ' remem- 
bered Jerusalem." These memories turned to their heroic 
past, to the legends, traditions, and endeavors of their old 
national life. And when they returned to their old homes 
to live, those old legends and traditions became for them 
the sacred direction for life. They were written down in 
Law and Prophet and Saying of the Wise. The extreme 
experiences of captivity and return made all their past 
sacred. "If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my right 
hand forget her cunning, may my tongue cleave to the roof 
of my mouth." The remnant that returned became ex- 
treme literalists. Their efforts to follow the Law, that is. 



EDUCATION IN THE ORIENTAL WORLD 39 

the written Folkways, are at once the most sublime and the 
most pathetic exhibition of blind moral heroism in the his- 
tory of the human race. For five hundred years after the 
return from captivity lawyers, priests, scribes, and rabbis 
were busy organizing, editing, and interpreting these mate- 
rials of the old traditions. Each new item thus established 
bound the people just so much more rigidly within the 
shackles of Law; yet every possible bit of such material 
was worked over, and if there was any probable basis for 
deciding that it was authoritative, it was included within 
the accepted sacred writings and the people submitted to 
the added burden. Of course there were those who could 
not understand these interminable details, but they were 
held in contempt by the learned doctors of the law who 
spent their time in thus binding "burdens heavy to be 
borne on the backs of the people." 

The training of the young under this system was, of 
course, formal, narrow, and hostile to progress, foreign to 
the modes of science, and inimical to the development of 
truth. But the constant terror of national extinction pro- 
duced even from these formidable materials a wonderful 
moral idealism, a deep and lasting purpose which has re- 
newed itself in the life of the Jews through two thousand 
years of wandering on the face of the earth and made of 
them a "peculiar people," indeed. 

Why did not the Hebrews Escape from their Folkways? 
— There was a time in the days just preceding and fol- 
lowing the Captivity when, under the leadership of the 
prophet Jeremiah, the Jews came near to reaching the level 
of individual and critical understanding which would have 
meant freedom from the old traditions. Jeremiah did, in- 
deed, declare that the authority of the old folkways had 
come to an end ^ and that the day of a new sort of social 

1 Jeremiah, Ch. 31; vv. 31-34. 



40 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

understanding and control was at hand; but the people 
never understood this statement and their further devel- 
opment was not in the direction of greater intellectual 
freedom and broader social organization. Instead, they 
sank more completely into the folkway attitude and devel- 
oped all the bonds of complete subjection to the past. 
They surrendered all their life and hope and purpose to 
the control of a literal custom and tradition ; their further 
education took, not the direction of science and freedom, 
but of authority and habit. Why? 

Two reasons may be given. First, the movement out of 
the folkways, up through the mazes of experience into the 
first glimpses of intellectual freedom and onward into the 
organization of a moral life under the control of intelli- 
gence, is a very long process, as we shall see later in the 
case of the Greeks. And for the Hebrews the time for this 
was all too short. They were approaching this outcome 
slowly in the period from Isaiah to Jeremiah ; but the com- 
plete overthrow and destruction of the nation by Babylo- 
nia ended that possibility. The time was too short to ac- 
complish a result so stupendous. 

The second reason may be found in the words of a 
Hebrew poet of the Captivity period: "By the Rivers of 
Babylon we sat down and wept. ' ' When the people found 
themselves forcibly expatriated they expended their ener- 
gies, not in intellectualizing their situation, but in weeping 
about it. They gave themselves up to a very natural emo- 
tional overflow; weeping absorbed the energies that might 
have gone into thinking. There is some evidence that their 
minds had played fitfully around the vague conception of 
a world-order freed from the bald control of mere tradi- 
tion and historic custom and organized and controlled by 
intelligence, but there is little evidence that they ever took 
the notion seriously or gave more than a passing thought 



EDUCATION IN THE ORIENTAL WORLD 41 

to it. That is to say, though the Hebrew life was rich in 
ideas and ideals, though the nation produced poets, 
prophets, sages, and religious leaders in profusion, yet 
never in the period of its national existence did it produce 
a critical philosopher, an organized psychology, or logic, — 
the tools of social reconstruction, — without which escape 
from the folkways seems impossible. Judaism produced 
no Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle. 

To be sure, in later ages, after the Jews had come into 
contact with the stimulating intellectual life of Europe, 
they produced a number of eminent critical philosophers. 
But in the days of their more isolated national life they 
expressed their energies in emotion and aspiration, not in 
the working out of a more fundamental critical basis upon 
which they might reorganize their disintegrating social 
order. With intellects disciplined to the limits of pre- 
cision by their strenuous education in the minute details 
of the law, they had become incapable of vital intellectual 
action in the presence of the great new problems that arose 
in their national and social crises. They stood by their old 
folkways to the end, in sublime faith, and saw their na- 
tional existence dissolve before their eyes. They "strained 
at the gnats" in their old traditions, and while thus en- 
gaged they were destroyed by forces that lay outside their 
understanding, forces against which they could only pray 
and hope, but about which they had never learned to think. 

We shall meet one large current from this old life at a 
later stage in our study. Meanwhile we must turn to an- 
other people and see how, through bravely facing the con- 
ditions of existence, they won escape and freedom from 
their own folkways and opened the door of freedom to the 
whole world. 



PART II 
THE WAY OUT OF THE FOLKWAYS 



CHAPTER IV 

EDUCATION EN THE FOLKWAYS OF THE OLDER ATHENIAN 

WORLD 

We have already noted three aspects of the folkway life 
of early peoples: the primitive life of fixed habit; the 
tendency toward degeneration of habit and custom ; and the 
movements by which a more extensive social organization 
and a more complete folkway system are realized on the 
Oriental level. If these were all the tendencies possible to 
humanity, the history of education were already ended. 
But Man has one more chance: he may hope to escape al- 
together from this primitive folkway type of living. How 
one nation made this escape we must now see. The his- 
tory of education beyond the folkway levels always begins 
with Greece. Greece is the first nation in the world's his- 
tory to escape from this folkway domination. All the 
"progress" of the world comes through this "escape" of the 
Greeks from the fixed conditions of life. For this reason 
it has been said that "except the blind forces of nature, 
nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its 
origin. ' ' 

The Folkways of Old Greece. — We have already seen 
that all customs and habits change imperceptibly. But 
among certain peoples customs and habits change very 
rapidly, yet without ever plunging the people into the ulti- 
mate questions of philosophy or social theory. The old 
Greek life emerges out of the shadows of the Homeric world 
with a certain fixedness of form: monarchic, aristocratic, 

45 



46 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

to some extent militaristic. The history of Greece for the 
centuries between Homer and the Persian Wars is a story 
of the very gradual development of democratic institu- 
tions. On the basis of the slavery of the many the com- 
paratively few Greek citizens developed a remarkable de- 
gree of individual participation in the conduct of affairs. 

Beginning with the clan life of the earliest period we 
find the gradual development of larger groups, the 
"phratry" or brotherhood of the clans, and the tribe with 
its tribal territories and its tribal city, and finally, out of 
many struggles, the federated tribes with their central 
state-city, the "city-state" of Greek history. 

Out of these developments came two (to mention no 
others) rather distinctive types of social organization and 
life: Sparta and Athens. Sparta was located in a fertile 
valley and peopled by a military race, warlike, aristocratic, 
ruling over a native slave population of tillers of the soil. 
Always fearful of her slaves or her neighbors, Sparta never 
escaped from the dominance of the aristocratic and mili- 
taristic parties. Her education was just such as we have 
seen under the primitive folkways: a long and severe 
training for the purpose of destroying every weakness and 
every fear, for Sparta must have soldiers. Sparta was a 
fortified military training establishment. She used the 
whole of her common life to promote her education for 
military service. 

Athens, on the other hand, was located near the sea. 
Her people were sea-going, enterprising, commercial, demo- 
cratic in instinct, artistic in their spirit, and progressive in 
mood. They early turned their attention from warlike 
conquests to commercial interests. Hence they lost their 
militaristic tendencies and with them their monarchic and 
aristocratic institutions. Athenian life was never domi- 
nated by military interests. In the same way, though the 



EDUCATION IN OLD ATHENS 47 

Athenian people were always religious, they never per- 
mitted the priest to become the dominant influence in their 
moral and civic, or even in their religious life. Athens 
thus escaped the two great barriers to freedom and devel- 
opment : Militarism and Ecclesiasticism. These tenden- 
cies toward democracy, industry, commercial extension, and 
freedom continued with characteristic struggles, but with 
real progress, until the Persian Wars in the fifth cen- 
tury, B.C. 

Education among the Earlier Greeks. — Spartan educa- 
tion, as we have noted, tended to develop the traditional 
and characteristic qualities of the soldier. We shall not 
describe it here. A good account of it can be found in 
Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus. It is mentioned here 
again for the purpose of pointing out the fact that Sparta's 
education never rose above the folkway level ; it never be- 
came intelligent. This is proved by this fact. After hun- 
dreds of years of constant training in military tactics 
Sparta continued to use the same old systems of organiza- 
tion and attack; so that when in the fourth century 
Sparta and Thebes fought for Grecian supremacy, Sparta 
was overwhelmingly defeated because the Thebans, under 
Epaminondas, used new and, from the folkway point of 
view, unfair methods of arranging their forces and strange, 
unheard-of methods of attack which the Spartans were 
utterly unable to withstand. So intelligence overthrew 
fixed habit. As long as all groups are on the same folk- 
way level victory must go to the superior physical force. 
Sparta was incapable of rising above this level. Thebes 
rose above it, and Sparta fell before superior intelligence. 

Athens, on the other hand, also had her older forms of 
education. Athens was the most completely human com- 
munity of the ancient world. The primitive folkways of 
the Athenians were almost as definite as those of the Spar- 



48 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

tans. But the Athenians were restless, wanderers on the 
earth, learners of new things. Hence their folkways were 
constantly subject to the influences of change, influences 
too slight to produce great crises, but important enough 
and constant enough to determine movement and develop- 
ment. Still the education of the young was fixed in rather 
narrow grooves. It was not public, as in Sparta, but it 
was subject to the closest supervision by the proper public 
magistrates. The results must measure up to certain pub- 
lic standards. This education could be given in the homes, 
but for the most part it was given in certain institutional 
ways where the children from several homes came together. 
The palaestra was a sort of playground-gymnasium where 
physical exercises were taught, and the didascaleum was a 
sort of music school where playing upon instruments and 
reading and writing were taught. 

There was some writing in the sand with sticks, and 
later upon wax tablets with a stylus, and finally, when the 
students were advanced sufficiently, upon parchment with 
pen and ink. There was learning and copying of texts 
and verses from the poets, singing and expressing the 
poems, and interpretation of the poetry studied. The ef- 
fort, rather unconsciously undertaken, seems to have been 
to help the boy to come to know the life he was beginning 
to share, the life of the city in which his life was to be 
spent. The "pedagogue" of old Athenian education was 
a mature man, though a slave, whose task it was to lead the 
boy through the streets of the city, not merely to and from 
the playground. The moral and civic significance of this 
is very great. There was no school, even in old Athens, 
as we think of school, a place apart from the actual life of 
the city where abstract, even irrelevant lessons are studied 
out of books that not even the teacher can fully under- 
stand. No. Education in old Athens retained most of the 



EDUCATION IN OLD ATHENS 49 

genuineness and immediateness of the older folkway re- 
sults. When a boy finished his years of training and ex- 
perience in playground, gymnasium, and music school, and 
his explorations of the city under the guidance of the peda- 
gogue, he was prepared to enter into the activities of the 
adult members of the social world. He was ready to under- 
stand the "Oath of Allegiance" that he took; he was ready 
to stand up before the citizens of Athens and take this vow : 

"I will never disgrace these sacred arms nor desert my com- 
panions in the ranks. I will fight for temples and public prop- 
erty, both alone and with many. I will transmit my fatherland, 
not only not less, but greater and better, than it was transmitted 
to me. I will obey the magistrates who may at any time be in 
power. I will observe both the existing laws and those which 
the people may unanimously hereafter make, and if any person 
seek to annul the laws or to set them at naught, will do my best 
to prevent him and will defend them alone and with many. I 
will honor the religion of my fathers. And I call to witness 
Agraulos, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, and Auxo and Hege- 
mone." ^ 

Educational Theory in Old Greece. — It is necessary to 
insist that this Old Greek Education was still essentially 
of the folkway type. It was not intelligently developed ; 
there was no elaborate theory underlying it. It had grown 
up and developed out of old customary practices, and it was 
of the nature of "rule of thumb." This is shown by the 
naivete of even such a writer as Thucydides who, though 
he belongs to an age later than the end of the Old Greek 
period (but before Euclid), still does not know simple 
mathematical principles. There was, indeed, no social 
theory in this earlier period. There was the beginning of 
a primitive speculation, but it was the "philosophy" of 
physical nature. Human knowledge began as far as pos- 

1 For explanation of these goda see Monroe: "Source Book," p, 33. 



50 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

sible from man himself. Philosophy began in speculations 
about the heavens and the structure and nature of the 
world. It was in a later period that "Socrates brought 
philosophy down from heaven to dwell among men," The 
utter lack of conscious theory of either social organization 
or education is shown in the later period when, old customs 
and institutions having become outgrown and uninhabi- 
table, the people are completely at a loss as to which way 
to turn. Life can go on under the folkways without con- 
scious theory, since practice and habit are fixed and no 
questions are permitted. But when customs and habits 
fail, when old practices become empty if not ridiculous and 
social life faces the chaos of systems destroyed and institu- 
tions broken down, what shall society do without some 
theory of the right social order, or at least some theory of 
the right way to go about the reconstruction of order? 

Social life demands order, system, institution; we are 
lost without these. But social life also demands growth, 
change, development; we die without these. Social order 
developed into fixed institutions can do without theories 
of social order, for habits and customs work best when 
theory is absent. But when, inevitably, habits and customs 
break down and social organization has, for a season, a 
chance to grow into new forms, then social theory is indis- 
pensable if the social order is to be saved from destruction. 
We must now follow the course of events in which the old 
Athenian folkways broke down under the shocks of con- 
flict. We must see the years of chaos and confusion, the 
strenuous efforts to restore social organization on the basis 
of new social theorizings, the failure to accomplish this re- 
sult through overwhelming pressures from outside, and the 
bequeathing to the world at large of the tragic experience 
of the Greeks, out of which have come all our world-devel- 
opments in politics, science, philosophy, and education. 



CHAPTER V 

THE BREAKDOWN OF THE ATHENIAN FOLKWAYS 

We have already seen three general and obvious aspects 
of the f olkway world : the life of stagnate habit, the possi- 
bility of degeneration toward a more completely physical 
existence, and the rise of a more extensive world on the 
Oriental level. But, as we have seen, no one of these, nor 
all of them together, holds any real promise for the growth 
of civilization and the development of culture. We find 
the first genuine promise of such advance in the Athenian 
world. Athens gave to the world the first suggestion of 
the possibility of a social order, not of the folkway type, 
in which intelligence should play a real part. Here we 
find the first real break with the primitive folkways. We 
must now discover the elements released in this breakdown 
of the primitive life of custom and habit. 

Human conduct, both social and individual, seems to 
express itself in three main modes.^ The first of these we 
have already discussed, the mode of Habit and Custom. 
Custom is the social structure, habit the individual expres- 
sion and acceptation of custom. When the long-accumu- 
lating customs of the group have become the full possession 
of the individual, he has become completely habituated. 
Habit, custom, folkway, all stand for certainty, for the 
mechanical, the fixed, the satisfactory, the final in conduct. 
They represent the group and individual achievement crys- 
tallized to date. The group is a complete structure, the 
individual a walking bundle of habit. The latter does not 

1 See Introduction in Thomas' "Source Book for Social Origins." 

61 



52 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

think ; his thinking has all been done for him and it is pre- 
supposed in his possession of habits. He lives by his social 
and personal habits, by the customs and traditions of the 
group, not by anything that can rightly be called "intelli- 
gence. ' ' 

The second of these social modes is Crisis. We have al- 
ready seen how habit changes by imperceptible degrees 
under the slow pressures of changing environmental con- 
ditions. It has been hinted, also, that more severe changes 
are possible; that such severe conditions might arise as to 
compel radical readjustments in the structure of the group 
in its habits and customs. Such a severe crisis would 
mean the breakdown, more or less complete, of the folk- 
ways, the failure of customary adjustments, uncertainty, 
chance for innovations, for development and growth. It 
would mean the rise of whatever intelligence the group 
latently possessed, for it would raise the problems of actual 
social order, problems requiring analysis, experiment, in- 
vention, if the group were capable of these things. At any 
rate, it would mean a complete break from the certainties 
of the folkway world into the uncertainties of chaos or of 
intellectual struggle, for it must be remembered that habit 
is the certain aspect of experience, intelligence the uncer- 
tain. 

"What could produce such crises? There are three gen- 
eral sources of this experience. First, some change in the 
natural environment — climatic changes, earthquakes, vol- 
canic eruptions, failures of food supplies, epidemics, and 
the like; whatever tends to destroy the fixed world within 
which accustomed habits have been depended upon. Sec- 
ond, some change in the social world — pressures of popula- 
tion that are overwhelming, migrations of new peoples into 
the range of the group, devastating wars, and the like. 
Third, the rise within the group of some extraordinary, 



BREAKDOWN OF ATHENIAN FOLKWAYS 53 

unexplainable, and non-conforming individual, a natural 
leader who breaks through the old ways and organizes new 
ones by the sheer force of his native energies. Any one of 
these three types of crises is likely to come to any people 
at any time. 

What shall be done by a group in the presence of such a 
complete crisis? Mr. Huxley has pointed out the three 
courses open to the animal whose life has been profoundly 
disturbed by environmental changes. It may perish; it 
may migrate ; it may reconstruct its modes of life to meet 
the new conditions. These same possibilities confront the 
group whose folkways have been broken down. It may 
disintegrate and perish, socially at least ; it may move to a 
new habitat where it can reestablish its old modes of living; 
it may face the new situation, the new conditions, and make 
its life over in such radical degree as will make possible its 
continuance in the old location. But this last solution may 
compel the development of analytic intelligence. 

This brings us to the third mode: Reconstruction, re- 
adjustment to changed internal or external conditions of 
group life. This involves the conscious and intelligent 
construction of new habits to meet the new conditions, in- 
vention of new social customs and attitudes, attention to 
elements of experience and conditions hitherto unnoticed, 
analysis of these conditions and elements, and development 
of a new world of practice, emotion, and either explicit or 
implicit philosophy. In short, it brings us to the necessity 
of the development of theory. 

Let us note its significance a little more fully. Crisis in 
the folkways precipitates the problems of reconstruction. 
This means the search for the theory, probably hitherto 
unconsciously held, that underlay the old habits and cus- 
toms, the determination as to whether that old theory will 
suffice for the new structure of life, the uncovering of th^ 



54 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

various elements of practice, feeling, and attitude that have 
held together and supported the old habits and customs, 
the invention of new attitudes, methods, and even aims for 
the readjustment of the world of action, finding new bonds 
to take the place of old customs, and the actual working 
out of the new conditions under which constructive action 
can go on, effort can accomplish things, and life itself can 
seem worth while. 

All this means that the effort toward reconstruction is 
an effort to get back into a world of certainty wherein con- 
trol is assured, i.e., back into a new sort of folkway. The 
history of the race is thus seen to be a series of struggles, 
that swing from one level of habit through crises and re- 
constructions to new levels of habit. But on the new levels, 
if these have been won by real struggle, the life of the race 
is richer, a little more intelligent, a little more worth while. 
Out of all these steps upward, these complications of folk- 
way, crisis, and reconstruction of new folkway, slowly 
emerge the new worlds of action, emotion, and civilization, 
with the enlarging understandings of experience, with the 
increased powers and controls that go with these larger 
worlds. Intelligence develops; knowledge grows and ac- 
cumulates; resources, physical, moral, and spiritual, are 
discovered and explored. Life is enriched, refined, and 
defined. Abuses appear, become sacred through custom, 
are criticised by the liberated, and are eliminated peace- 
fully or through the shocks of war. But out of it all a 
larger life emerges and human nature takes on new quali- 
ties and finds its higher good in new directions. 

The Crisis in Athens. — This first developed in the actual 
experiences of the world in the life of the Athenian Greeks. 
Athens in the days preceding the Persian conflicts was a 
world grown very complete through long development, 
while at the same time there existed an undercurrent of 



BREAKDOWN OF ATHENIAN FOLKWAYS 55 

unrest, foretelling the possibility of some decisive social 
crisis. The long struggles in Athens for the development 
of democratic government had largely undermined the re- 
spect for old customs and traditions that still held Sparta 
bound fast to the past. The rise of such expressions of the 
national life as lyric poetry, as against the epic, showed 
the stirrings deep within of the individual spirit. The 
growth of a critical philosophy of the physical universe, 
while it had not yet directly touched the problems of the 
social life, had undermined the older traditional founda- 
tions of the universe, the mythical stories of creations, etc., 
and had laid the basis for the eventual undermining of the 
social world as well. The growth of knowledge of nature 
and society had reached the explosion-point ; all that was 
needed was the fire, or the shock, to set it off. 

Then came the tremendous impact of the two great 
world-orders of that time: Persia against Greece, the 
Oriental civilization against the Occidental; the East 
against the new West. After two thousand years of con- 
flict such impacts are still in our own day profoundly in- 
fluential of change. What must this first great conflict 
have meant to Greece? It actually meant the complete 
breakdown of her primitive folkways. This was the climax 
of several hundred years of general tendency. It came 
to its inevitable conclusion in Athens. It liberated the 
minds of the people from the lingering controls of old cus- 
toms and traditions; it brought on the first great disillu- 
sionment of the human mind. "Our folkways are not the 
way of living; they are simply a way, and who can tell 
whether they are better than some other way?" 

The breakdown of folkway institutions means the break- 
down of personal and individual habit, the release of ener- 
gies that may run riot, even to destruction, the loosening 
of all the common bonds of established social order, and 



66 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the emergence of the feeling of individual freedom, even 
license. "This is now a free country and I can do as I 
please." This is especially the way in which such an ex- 
perience is likely to come to the young. On the part of the 
older members of the group, especially the civic and moral 
leaders, such a breakdown brings the fear of social disin- 
tegration, of anarchy and decay. That is to say, such an 
experience releases emotions, feelings, attitudes of mind, 
hopes and fears and the like, most or all of which are new 
in the group life. 

But this means that such crises bring about conditions 
under which the mind actually grows. Under fixed habit 
and custom mental life does not properly exist. As we 
have seen, the folkway is a mechanism. But in the social 
crisis the social mechanism has broken down, and intelli- 
gence must appear if the group is to be saved from destruc- 
tion. Old traditions still persist, but they are denied by 
new conditions or ignored by the newly released individual 
energies. Problems are everywhere. What shall the out- 
come be ? Shall it be actual destruction of the group, dis- 
integration of the group into so many atoms of unre- 
strained individualism, the recapture of the group by some 
old folkway resurgent, or the swinging of the group, 
through the emergence of intelligence, up to some new 
level of organized living? The future must answer these 
questions. Athenian intelligence faced them squarely. 

The Crisis as an Educational Problem. — Plato repre- 
sents this critical social and educational situation very 
clearly in the dialogue called " Euthydemus. " In the old 
days fathers had little or no difficulty about the careers of 
their sons; such questions were settled by the customs of 
the folkways. But in the troublous times of the crisis 
Crito voices the insistent difficulty. Old types of educa- 
tion have broken down. In their places have come "those 



BREAKDOWN OF ATHENIAN FOLKWAYS 57 

who pretend to teach others," but these new teachers all 
seem to be "such outrageous beings" that in despair Crito 
comes to Socrates. His question is the most fundamental 
question of the age: "I have often told you, Socrates, 
that I am in constant difficulty about my two sons. What 
am I to do with them?" 

This is more than the question of one father in his deal- 
ing with two sons. It is the question of one generation 
dealing with the future of the nation. "I am in constant 
uncertainty about the whole future of Athens. What shall 
we do about it?" And the question is fundamental. 
The folkways are gone; the individual stands forth unre- 
strained, undisciplined, ignorant of life, contemptuous of 
old controls. This is a new power in human life, this in- 
dividual, the most precious power ever uncovered. But it 
is likewise a new danger. Will he destroy the works of 
the centuries? If so, will he at the same time destroy 
himself? The world's hope may rest in him; but has the 
past no value? And is his own value in his undisciplined 
strength, or will he find a truer value when he shall have 
learned how to use the past in making his own energies 
more accurate, more definite, more sure? These are the 
questions of the future. Humanity finds itself rather sud- 
denly released from the traditional and customary bondage 
of the centuries. It must try itself out in this new free- 
dom. What is human nature ? That must be investigated, 
its remote characteristics explored, its larger significance 
determined. What is physical nature? This, too, must 
be searched out. It will take years, ages. Indeed, after 
two thousand years we are just getting fairly started on 
this mighty adventure. 

But in the meantime actual problems confront the citi- 
zen of Athens. The world is in chaos. What shall the citi- 
zen, the lover of his city, do ? All sorts of men will appear 



58 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

in the course of this larger history, including men who 
will be able to live in the midst of social chaos without much 
awareness of the events transpiring about them. But this 
experience of Athens is new in the history of the race. 
The ages to come may work out many answers for just 
such problems, many suggestions for periods of unrest. 
But in this first period of confusion an immediate answer 
of some sort is needed. Who can supply it ? 

Even at this early date not one answer alone, but five at 
least were offered, not all at once, but within the next cen- 
tury. Two of them came immediately, the other three in 
later years. These five proposed solutions of this crucial 
situation in the life of Athens represent a wide range of 
responses, from that of the unprogressive habit that would 
have the world turn back to old practices to the most 
fundamental intelligence that would urge the race on to- 
ward undreamed-of things. We must take up these five 
proposed answers in regular order. In our grasp of them 
we shall find the fundamental clues to the whole interpreta- 
tion of history. We shall not all agree in our valuation of 
these answers. In fact these answers will classify us as to 
our own social outlooks and our educational programs. 
Perhaps that will be their real value. At any rate, history 
is to be for us a teacher as well as a subject of study. We 
turn to tuese answers given in Athens. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE FIRST ANSWER: THE ATTITUDE OF THE 
CONSERVATIVES 

"We have seen how Athens, rising up through many cen- 
turies of folkway development, found herself in the latter 
part of the fifth century in the midst of an all but com- 
plete breakdown of these old folkway controls. Confu- 
sion, disillusionment, and anarchy seemed to be her des- 
tiny.^ If, underneath all this confusion, the common life of 
daily activity still went on in the grip of habit too strong 
to be lightly broken, yet, on the surface at least, customs 
of centuries fell away. Individuals found themselves freed 
from the usual restraints, and old social controls in family, 
industry, and civic authority failed to meet the situation 
completely. Athens found herself, as Carlyle might say, 
"socially naked," the protecting clothes of social custom 
gone. There was, of course, no escape from this experi- 
ence if civilization were ever to rise above the level of the 
folkways. None the less, such an experience must produce, 
whether in society or in the individual, profound shock. 

What shall be done about it? How shall society be re- 
constituted? How shall the rising generations be edu- 
cated? How shall the dangerous energies released in this 
experience be organized for larger social tasks and pur- 
poses? How shall rampant individuals be restrained? 
How shall the future be made secure? But, also, how 
shall the constructive energies released in this experience 
be organized into the social life? How shall the tremen- 

1 Cf. "Story of Alcibiades." 

59 



60 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

dous possibilities of individual freedom and individual con- 
tribution be realized? What shall society become? But, 
most of all, what shall education become under these 
strange new conditions? As stated above, at least five 
answers were offered to this problem. 

The Answer of the Conservatives. — In Athens, as al- 
ways, there existed a great body of conservative people to 
whom this age of confusion brought profound dismay. 
These were of the older social tradition, opponents of the 
long democratic movement, essential aristocrats.. They 
were naturally timid of mind. They had privileges which 
seemed to be threatened by these changes. They were set 
in their ways and change was utterly unwelcome to them. 

Shocked by the disrespect for old customs, the "immorali- 
ties" of the times which seem to them nothing short of 
insanity, they seriously proposed that Athens must under- 
take to get rid of the disturbers (among whom was Socra- 
tes), and then return and rebuild the folkways that were 
gone. This is the first solution of the problem. Perhaps 
the most graphic account of the state of mind of this party 
is to be found in "The Clouds" of Aristophanes. In this 
play the age of confusion is represented as being steeped 
in all sorts of destructive immoralities. Morality and re- 
ligion are both subverted and made to pander to the bauble 
reputations and financial gains of the Sophists. Ancient 
moral ideas having real social significance are replaced by 
modern selfish ideals. Intelligence has become completely 
superficial, easily developed, easily changed ; anything can 
be taught to anybody for an adequate consideration. Over 
against this Aristophanes sets the values of the old educa- 
tion : ^ Justice, temperance, hardiness of body and mind, 

1 The student should read these contrasts of the "new" and the 
"old" educations. See Monroe, "Source Book of the Hist, of Ed.," 
pp. 82-4. 



THE ATTITUDE OF THE CONSERVATIVES 61 

respect for age, "the education which nurtured the men 
who fought at Marathon." Is it possible to return and 
rebuild the old social system and the old education? To 
the conservative man this seems the only sane solution of a 
problem that ought never to have arisen in the first place. 
Impossibility of the Conservative Program. — Desirable 
as such a program may seem from many points of view, 
a very little thought convinces us of its utter impossibility. 
Socially, the old structure of society is gone. The old in- 
stitutions are either left far behind or are regarded in 
utterly new ways, and the most energetic members of the 
community have escaped from this old respect for custom. 
There is no likelihood that they will ever be recaptured or 
that they will voluntarily return. Indeed, they cannot re- 
turn. Psychologically, it is impossible to forget these new 
and profoundly convincing experiences of freedom and to 
reinstate the old habits of bondage to custom. Men have 
tried that and they have failed. What has been done must 
be met, not by going backward, but by going forward. 
There is danger, of course, in going forward. Much that 
has lasting social worth is likely to be ignored and left be- 
hind in the forward movement ; much was ignored and left 
behind. Yet society must be saved in some way ; and since 
the aristocrats and conservatives of the times could do 
little but wail about the "good old times" and ridicule the 
new movements, they are quite as much to blame for the 
excesses of the later times as are the undisciplined expo- 
nents of those later times. The new age, the new institu- 
tions, the new social order, the new education, must come 
to Athens. These ought to be developed through the co- 
operation of the conservative elements and the radical ele- 
ments. The wisdom of the past and the impulse and initia- 
tive of the present ought to collaborate in the construction 
of the new social and educational world, consciously, inten- 



62 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

tionally, intelligently. This must happen; it does really 
happen; but neither side of the argument either admits it 
or even knows it. Each seems to go its own way. 

The Conservation of Old Social Custom and Habit. — 
Despite the profound shock to Greek life caused by this 
crisis of the fifth and fourth centuries, despite the fact 
that society cannot go backward, if it is to go on to higher 
levels of civilization, despite the fears of the conservatives 
who saw only ruin ahead for their city, despite the con- 
tempt which, as we shall see, the Sophists felt for old cus- 
toms and habits, much of that old habit and custom still 
persisted. The work of the world went on. Men ate, 
slept, toiled, or idled; they married; children were born 
and grew up in some sort of family and community life; 
some sort of religious rituals continued ; social order in 
some measure existed. Deep under all the waves on the 
surface of the social sea the quiet tides of custom and habit 
roll onward. These social tides are not meaningless, they 
do not merely repeat the old. They conserve the old, even 
when we think that older element has been entirely left be- 
hind. Out from these struggles of the Greek world emerges 
the substantial structure of a common life which persists 
through the Roman period, through the Middle Ages, and 
on into our own times. It is true that changes on the sur- 
face of the social world have always gradually effected 
changes in the deeper currents of social life. And occa- 
sionally some profound revolution has shaken through and 
through the whole body of society, until even the common 
mass has thrown off the customs of centuries and taken on 
the new organization of life. But usually there has been 
a gradual reaccommodation afterwards. The old has re- 
asserted itself somewhat, the new has yielded a little of its 
arrogance, and some degree of historical continuity actually 
obtains. 



THE ATTITUDE OF THE CONSERVATIVES 63 

No social or educational program can succeed, as we shall 
see, that ignores this substratum of age-old habit in the 
common life. The answers that we have yet to discuss 
give promise of being successful or of failing just to the 
extent that they recognize this most fundamental social and 
educational factor. Habit is one of the two most profound 
characteristics of human nature. Its significance for social 
order, for social progress, for educational stagnation and 
development, must not be forgotten. The conservative 
party in Athens made impossible proposals when they sug- 
gested that Athens should return to the times and manners 
of the old folkways. But in that proposal there was 
wrapped up this other profound and not impossible, but 
very necessary, fact : that society lives and moves in a great 
world of habit, and that however profoundly that world of 
habit may be shaken by critical experiences, the substan- 
tial progress of the world is conserved thereby, even though 
at times it is also hindered thereby. 

The other profound characteristic of human nature ap- 
pears in the next answer that was made to the Greek ques- 
tion, and to that we must now turn. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE SECOND ANSWER: THE PROPOSALS OF THE 
SOPHISTS 

We have seen that in a time of crisis society cannot go 
back to conditions as they existed before the crisis; broken 
worlds of habit cannot be put back together again and 
treated as if the break were not there. The broken world 
must be accepted, and the ultimate outcome must develop 
out of facing the facts, not out of ignoring them. 

Characteristics of the Critical Social Situation. — The 
breakdown of custom released the individual, with many 
undisciplined impulses and energies, with an inner world 
of feelings, emotions, and opinions which had escaped the 
complete control of old habit and custom. The individual 
stands out — not the strikmg individual merely, but the 
common individual. He seems so full of energy, of inno- 
vations, of new and untried possibilities that, over against 
the drab monotony of the old customary life, the world 
takes on wonderful, new, strange, beautiful colorings and 
contrasts. These new, even undreamed, developments are 
surely worth preserving; they are worth more complete 
realization. As against mere conformity they are infi- 
nitely worth while. Folkway society suppresses all these 
individual contributions and possibilities. Society is an 
ancient evil to be escaped ; the individual alone has lasting 
worth. Thus does the first articulate voice of the new 
order answer the wailing of the old order. 

The Sophist Analysis of the Situation. — The first medi- 
ators of a world of broken habits and customs are always 

64 



THE PROPOSALS OF THE SOPHISTS 65 

"sophists." They are as extreme on the radical side as are 
the reactionaries on the other side. But they perform 
certain great and lasting services to the world. They take 
account of the fact that old habits are broken down and 
that old customs do not any longer sway the consciences 
and activities of men. They seize upon the energies and 
impulses released in the crisis and by emphasis, even by 
exaggeration, they make these new resources of the human 
spirit stand out until intelligence can grasp them and 
bring them into use. Thus they commit the race to a defi- 
nite movement out of custom, out of the longing for cus- 
tom, into the acceptance of a point of view from which 
there is absolutely no escape save through the development 
of new levels of intelligence. 

The Sophists said: "Let the individual have free play; 
that is his right and his proper function. The old customs 
are gone, and well may they be forgotten. Society is a 
crime against the individual. Each man should be the 
judge of his own good; each individual should be the meas- 
ure of his own world. One man's opinion is just as good 
as another's, if he can sustain that opinion in an argument. 
Society is a fallacy; the world is made up of individuals. 
We do not want systems; we want to get as far from old 
group-controls as possible. Education is a matter of in- 
dividual development. Old types of education destroyed 
individuality. The new education will ignore customary 
aims. It will make each individual an aim in himself, and 
it will make of him whatever he may choose to become, for 
education can do anything with anyone." This is, as is 
easily seen, practically the complete denial of everything 
held valuable in the old folkway education and the accept- 
ance of much there held immoral. 

The Sophists had no system, unless it was the systematic 
denial of systems. Theirs was the logic of individualism. 



66 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

They represent the absolutely necessary, yet socially appal- 
ling, task of ploughing up old social soils for the purpose 
of laying the foundations of the new social order. That 
new social order did not appear in their own considera- 
tion of the future, save perhaps in the vision of a few of 
the very best, like Protagoras. Their task was the tearing 
up of the old soils ; it was left to other forces to build the 
new order. 

The Psychology of the Sophist Attitude. — But though 
they had no system, a rather definite tendency runs through 
all their proposals and activities, and we must see what this 
tendency is. Customs are universal social bonds holding 
together in one social unity all those who have been accus- 
tomed to them; habit is the individual expression of these 
social customs. This is the psychology of the folkways. 
Now habit and custom suppress the originality of the in- 
dividual. That originality finds chance and room for ex- 
pression when the folkways break down for a time; and 
that originality expresses itself in individual impulses, 
feelings, emotions, energies, and initiatives. These seem to 
the Sophists the valuable elements in life, and these are 
possible only when the folkways have been broken down. 

But the Greek Sophists were still too close to their folk- 
way ancestry to realize that habits and customs cannot be 
thrown off so easily and so completely. Habitual attitudes 
and feelings still persist under the surface of assumed 
''originality." Especially opinion, which seems individual 
and which the Sophists valued so highly, is really only 
the expression of old habit-attitudes, or no less unintelli- 
gent contradictions of those attitudes. Hence their "opin- 
ions," instead of being surely original contributions, were 
frequently nothing but the reassertion of old customary 
commonplaces. They were all the more valuable, perhaps, 
for that fact, but still that fact shows us how much the 



THE PROPOSALS OF THE SOPHISTS 67 

Sophists were deceived in their belief that they had 
reached the summation of wisdom. Their "opinions" 
were, as Socrates later pointed out, half-thoughts, some- 
thing more than mere vague feelings about the world, some- 
thing less than clear ideas or complete understanding. 
These "opinions" intentionally break with old attitudes. 
In that way they make for the progress of the world, but 
they do not critically arrive at reliable and substantial new 
attitudes. Hence they are subject to the biting criticisms 
of later thinkers, and they have turned the term ' ' sophist ' ' 
into a common reproach. 

The Social Significance of the Sophists. — The Sophists 
professed to teach in all the social fields : morality, religion, 
politics, industry, education, etc. In each of these fields 
they declared that a social unity of opinion was of no value, 
but only individual capacity; that since society did not 
exist, or did not rightly exist, it could make no difference 
which side of an argument the student chose. Not the 
outcome but the method of argument was the ideal, and 
that therefore each student should be taught only those 
things which he should need in his future career. This 
program completely ignores the demands of tradition in 
education, and it marks the beginning of the world's great- 
est movement after the folkways are left, the movement 
in the direction of theory. Life thus far, as we have seen, 
has been lived without critical thinking, simply under the 
control of habit and custom. Habit and custom break 
down; a new order must arise. Shall it be another "rule 
of thumb" sort of social order? Or shall it find place 
within itself for the organization of intelligent living, i.e., 
living based in some genuine degree upon critical investiga- 
tion of conditions, intelligent organization of the results of 
those critical investigations, and actual construction of a 
world of life and action along the lines laid down in this 



68 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

intelligence? The Sophists did not go far in working out 
the implications of their movement; but by raising the 
question, "What does this individual really need?" they 
opened the way to the only true answer, "That depends 
upon your theory of the universe, the world, life, educa- 
tion, social order" — an answer that must eventually be- 
come the basis of a complete reconstruction of the condi- 
tions of existence. However partial or faulty the Sophist 
philosophy may seem to have been, it was an actual contri- 
bution to the progress of the world, the working out of a 
stage in the development of intelligence and education with- 
out which modern civilization could not have been achieved. 
There is absolutely no way out of the folkways save through 
"sophism," though the Sophists themselves never com- 
pletely escape. He who comes through into the world of 
complete freedom must be at some time a Sophist, but he 
must become, like Socrates, something more than a Sophist, 
or at least the "greatest of the Sophists." 

The Fallacies of the Sophist Position. — Psychology, as 
such, did not exist in the Sophist period; hence they failed 
to appreciate their own half-complete attitudes. Pioneers 
in the individual advance, they became, as was almost in- 
evitable, individualists, ignoring or denying the meaning 
and the existence of the "social." They built a new world, 
or thought they did, out of individual impulse. Thus they 
thought they were fostering the individual and denying the 
social control which had hitherto suppressed the individual. 

In this there were two big facts they did not and could 
not know. First, that the individual does not exist and 
cannot come into being apart from society. Second, that 
individual impulse may be itself the basis of lasting and 
permanent universal social bonds. That is to say, society 
produces the real individual, and society is itself assured 
in the genuine needs of the individual. But it must re- 



THE PROPOSALS OF THE SOPHISTS 69 

main for Socrates, and a thousand thinkers after him, to 
struggle through the long thought-paths that lead to this 
result. Meanwhile we must turn to Socrates and ask for 
the third answer to the problem of the Greeks. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE THIRD ANSWER: THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCRATES 

(469-399 B.C.) 

"Mankind can hardly be too often reminded," says 
John Stuart Mill, "that there once was a man named 
Socrates." But few people, even students of history, phi- 
losophy, and education, know why Mill said that, or what 
Socrates really contributed to the progress of humanity. 
Davidson says : ^ * ' Socrates discovered free personality 
and moral freedom, and made the greatest of all epochs in 
the world's history." What does such a statement really 
mean ? What was the real work of this man Socrates ? 

The Situation Reviewed. — It is evident that Socrates 
contributed something that was of the nature of a distinct 
advance, a break with the answers of both the conservatives 
and the sophists, the introduction of something new, the 
setting of the currents of history into new channels. If 
we are to understand his work, we must get a clear grasp 
of his problem. 

We have already seen two possible ways of living: life 
according to habit and custom, as in the folkways ; and life 
according to impulse, feeling, and opinion, as advocated 
by the Sophists. These are the two answers already pro- 
posed. Now if there is nothing further, what must the 
Greek world do? Is the Sophist program possible? 
Where does it lead? To complete anarchy, to the destruc- 
tion of social order, to a world peopled by individu- 
als who have no sense of common relationship? If 

1 "History of Education," p. 101. 

70 



THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCRATES 71 

so, what is the end of the story to be? But on the other 
hand, is it possible to go back into the old folkway life, to 
the bondage of custom and tradition? Where would such 
a pathway lead eventually? To stagnation, to corruption, 
to a world that had lost the little gleam of light and had 
fallen back into despair. 

But, if no other pathway opens, Athens must go one way 
or the other of these two — to a life of slavish habit again, 
or to a life of unlimited confusion. And in the end we 
can readily see which of these will happen. Athens will 
fall back into some sort of unintelligent folkway. Custom 
and habit will reassert their control over the world, be- 
cause man must have a social world. Men cannot live the 
sort of life the Sophists insisted upon. Men cannot exist 
like grains of sand in a heap, mere atoms of a social mass. 
Men are the products of a social order, and they cannot live 
without a social background, a "fatherland" of some sort. 
This is something the folkways had provided; but the 
Sophists derided the idea. 

On the other hand, have the Sophists offered nothing of 
value to the world? Must their work go entirely for noth- 
ing? That depends. They have offered something of 
priceless worth, if the world really gets it. But the tragic 
fact is that the Sophists were incapable of finishing what 
they began, and their work would be worse than useless 
unless it were really carried through. They were on a 
pathway that led to finer, larger, richer fields of living than 
anything the world had dreamed of. But they did not see, 
they could not follow to the end. Socrates did see, for 
he was on the same road, a road which all must travel who 
would escape from the folkways into a life of intelligence. 
Socrates followed to within sight of the end at least. He 
was the "greatest of the Sophists," the first real thinker 
in the world's history. What was it he thought? 



72 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Two Programs, and a Third. — The characteristic of the 
folkways is Habit. Habit, as developed in the customary 
life of the folkways, has two aspects. It is first a universal 
social bond, holding together all who have been habituated ; 
second, it is mechanical, externally imposed, inculcated by 
means of a fixed education, suppressing all individual im- 
pulse, originality, and personal expression. There are 
here, therefore, a good — the bond of a common social life — 
and an evil — a mechanical and external system which so- 
ciety imposes upon all individuals for their control. 

The characteristic of the Sophist program is Individual 
Impulse. Impulse also has two aspects. It is first per- 
sonal, the expression of the inner life, original, fraught 
with the keenest personal interest, but it is also particular, 
the peculiar possession of one individual, private, unlike 
anything else in the world. There are here, therefore, 
again a good — personal expression of the inner life — and 
an evil — a particular, private program of living which 
holds its right to exist against all protest. 

Now, the advocate of the older folkway program stood 
firmly for his proposals, and the Sophist stood firmly for 
his. It is the glory of one man, Socrates, that he dared to 
tear these two programs to pieces, to take from each of them 
the good, the desirable element, to attempt to combine these 
desirable elements into a new program and to discard the 
other elements. After all, the significant element in the 
folkways was the universal social bond, the thing that 
made society. If some other way of assuring this social 
bond can be found, no one need insist upon the mechanics 
of the folkways. Again, the significant thing in the Sophist 
program is personal initiative, the reality of the individu- 
al's inner life. If this can be assured in society, the doc- 
trine of an atomistic world of individuals can be readily 
discarded. 



THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCRATES 73 

And so, Socrates assures us, out of these two diverse and 
even antagonistic programs a third, a new program, can be 
developed which will combine the good from each of the 
old. Let us combine the ideal of a real social order, con- 
tributed by the folkways, with the ideal of personal initia- 
tive and individual expression contributed by the Sophists. 
So far, so good ; but how can this be done ? Personal initia- 
tive is an impulse ; hence it is a particular expression, while 
social order is a universal expression. Can a particular 
impulse become a universal bond ? The reactionaries would 
have said "No," and the Sophists did say "No." But 
Socrates said "Yes," and in that courageous statement he 
found a way out of both the mechanics of the folkways and 
the anarchy of impulse into the world of ideas and moral 
freedom. 

Socrates' Doctrine of Ideas. — We have seen that the 
Sopliists had "opinions" and that the people of the folk- 
ways had "habits." Socrates partly points out, partly 
implies, that implicit in every habit there is the "idea" 
of that habit, that is to say, an intelligent statement of the 
nature and significance of the habit by means of which 
two people can discuss the habit, agree upon it, under- 
stand it, even work out a program by which it can be in- 
culcated. He fully points out that implicit in every im- 
pulse and every "opinion" there is an "idea." He calls 
these "opinions" of the Sophists "half-thoughts." He 
tells them that their salvation lies not in these partial prod- 
ucts of personal initiative, but in carrying their impulses 
through until they become "whole-thoughts," that is, fully 
developed "ideas"; and he insists that when an impulse 
or an "opinion" has been carried through to complete de- 
velopment, until it has become an "idea," it ceases to be a 
"particular" and becomes a "universal." That is to say, 
every impulse, though it may seem to be the most particular 



74 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

thing in the world, is really an incipient universal. It has 
its universal significance, and every universal proposition 
has grown out of some particular impulse or half-mature 
* ' opinion. ' ' 

Impulses and "opinions" then, when they are fully 
developed, become universals, and instead of destroying the 
social order as the reactionaries feared and the Sophists 
hoped, they affirm and assure the social order, or some so- 
cial order. What the Sophists most emphasized, individual 
impulse and ''opinion," is thus shown by Socrates to be 
the very foundation of some larger social order, with this 
advantage over the old social order ; the new, developed out 
of impulses and "opinions," can be both personally pos- 
sessed by its members and intelligently understood, organ- 
ized, criticised, and controlled by them. Ideas release us 
from the machine-made order of the folkways and from the 
anarchy of the Sophist program into the world of intelli- 
gent understanding and control, "the world of free per- 
sonality and moral freedom," and this "discovery of ideas" 
marks the beginning of the "greatest epoch in the world 
history." Socrates occupies the place in history that he 
holds because he found the way out of both the stagnation 
of habit and the anarchy of impulse. It is for this reason 
that "mankind cannot be too often reminded" that he 
lived. Ideas can take the place of the unconscious mech- 
anism of the folkways on the one hand and the conscious 
"half thoughts" or opinions of the Sophists on the other. 
They give man control over his own destiny; they make 
him free. 

The Significance of All This for Education. — Through 
the work of Socrates the world for the first time reached the 
conception of a life of freedom that should still be subject 
to some sort of general rule or intelligence or "law." Here 
is a freedom not of the "outlaw," but of an encompassing 



THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCRATES 75 

social order, a social order that has been developed by 
human nature, by individual growth and thought, a social 
order that gives both freedom and the sense of "father- 
land." 

But the doubt arises, can ideas really be social bonds? 
Does knowledge unite people ? Socrates insists that it does. 
Opinions divide people, because they are accidental, uucriti- 
cised, based on old prejudices or other folkway attributes; 
but ideas unite people, because they have been criticised, 
shorn of their particular elements, and carried through 
until only tlieir universal and common elements and mean- 
ings remain. They represent really human attitudes, atti- 
tudes that all humans can share. 

But where do ideas come from? They seem rather won- 
derful things. What is their origin? Socrates taught in 
the midst of the busy life of the city. He had no school. 
He called men aside as they passed along the street and he 
said to them: *'Do you know what you are doing?" 
Here was his school, himself as teacher, his pupil a man 
picked up at random or some one who sought him out. 
He saw that men were going about their living and their 
work either under the control of mechanical habit or under 
the urge of some half -developed "opinion." In either case 
they were victims of external and impersonal controls. 
Socrates insisted that man's first duty was to "know him- 
self," — to think through from both habit and opinion to 
real ideas that he can call his own. Ideas, we thus see, 
grow out of the very soil of common experience, out of the 
heart of life, out of the world of work, out of the civic 
situation. Ideas are social products. In the growth of 
experience, in the midst of habits, opinions, and impulses, 
ideas are needed, are called for, are slowly developed and 
hammered into shape for use, for the control of impulses, 
for the explanation and criticism of habits, for the fore- 



76 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

casting of the future. Social experience finds its finest 
fruit in the production of illuminating and organizing 
ideas. 

Such a discussion probably exaggerates the Socratic posi- 
tion a little, for he did not see all that is implied in ideas. 
But such an explanation of his position seems necessary if 
we are to see clearly what Mill and Davidson and hundreds 
of others mean when they speak in such eulogistic terms of 
this man. It helps us to see, also, what is meant by the 
saying, "Socrates brought down philosophy from heaven 
to dwell among men." 

The "Socratic Method." — Socrates taught by asking 
questions. His questions were directed to the habit he 
wanted to uncover, to the impulse he wanted to explore, in 
the hope that he might be able to help "bring to birth," 
as he called it, the idea that should explain either the 
habit or the impulse in question. "Asking questions" is 
not necessarily Socratic. The Socratic method works for 
the production of ideas in the soil of the pupil 's experience. 
It is like the farmer's use of the hoe. The farmer does not 
expect to uncover corn when he hoes up the ground. He 
does expect to stimulate the growth of the corn in and 
on the stalk, where it should grow. So Socrates asked 
questions for the purpose of stimulating the growth of 
ideas within the experience of the student. Such ideas be- 
long to the one who grows them. Such ideas need no fur- 
ther emotional stimulant in order to get them into action. 
They act because they are outlets which experience has been 
blindly seeking. Hence the good can be taught, if it is 
taught so that it rises up within the actual experience of the 
individual himself; but it cannot be taught by forcing it 
upon the individual from without. The teacher brings 
forth ; he does not put in information. 

The Failure of the Socratic Program. — The great con- 



THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCRATES 77 

tributions of Socrates are these: he shows the significance, 
nature, and origin of ideas, and the method of develop- 
ing ideas as social products. He opened up to the world 
the unsuspected inner realm of ideal intelligence, the realm 
of freedom, the realm of civilization and science. He 
pointed to a gradually growing civilization that should, 
little by little, realize the meanings implicit in its own hab- 
its and impulses, until it should come to know itself and 
thus reach freedom. He found the way out of the folk- 
ways without destroying what the folkways had accom- 
plished. He escaped from sophistry by being the greatest 
of the Sophists. 

But his promises and his methods failed in very complete 
degree in the Greek world, and for obvious reasons. Soc- 
rates stands at the apex of Greek intelligence; decline be- 
gins with his death. He failed for two main reasons. The 
first of these was that the Greek political and social order 
was rapidly disintegrating, and in such a time men want 
some immediate solution for their difficulties. Something 
much more adaptable to the conditions of the times was 
found in a later answer to this same old Greek question. 
The Socratic program of building up an intelligent social 
order from within involved too much time, too much faith 
in a stable future, too much intelligence, too much knowl- 
edge for such an early period in the development of intel- 
ligence. 

The second reason why it failed was that men are not 
quite brave enough to face the uncharted future. Human- 
ity is rather timid. Men want certainty, or at least a high 
degree of assurance. The sophist is the unusual man who 
breaks with the past rather heedlessly and boasts of his 
ability to live without social order or community tradition. 
But most men are lost when out of sight of familiar ob- 
jects. Socrates opened up the great world of intelligence, 



78 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the land of moral and intellectual pioneering. That land is 
still, after more than two thousand years, not crowded. It 
is highly praised — from afar. It is the rather rare indi- 
vidual who freely chooses to enter and explore. Is it any 
wonder that in those earlier days the proposal to solve the 
world's problems by social intelligence failed to meet a 
unanimous response? And in the light of the old securi- 
ties of life, property, tradition, custom, and privilege un- 
der the folkways and the daring uncertainties of life in a 
Socratic social order, is there any real basis for wonder 
that the good men and true in Athens decided that it was 
necessary for the peace and security of the city of Athens 
that Socrates must die? 

But we thus find ourselves, through his work, freed from 
the folkways and standing on the borders of the land of 
''free personality and moral and intellectual freedom." 
But dare we go in? Is it not an illusion set for our de- 
struction, and are we brave enough ? Is it not too wonder- 
ful? Can we attain unto it? Another land, less arduous 
of prospect and more beautiful, lies at the end of another 
road. With the death of Socrates, and his consequent dis- 
crediting, another leader of the life of inquiry appears. 
Plato offers another solution to those who want intelligent 
answer to their question. Socrates is gone; Plato shall be 
our leader. He is wiser than Socrates, as we shall see, for 
he does not expect too much of men. Philosophy, educa- 
tion, ethics, religion, social organization — all are turning 
from the impracticable program of Socrates to the less 
arduous aims of Plato. We, too, shall turn and follow him 
into the land of the ultimate good. If, perchance, the path 
we follow shall lead us into another folkway world, it will 
at least be a larger and a nobler world than that of the 
primitive age, and it will certainly be more secure by far 
than this wild dream of Socrates ! 



THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCRATES 79 

We thus see how the race escapes from the folkways for 
a moment, only to be frightened at its freedom. We turn 
now to Plato and the beginnings of the building of a new 
and larger type of world-folkway. We shall follow Plato 
and Platonism for more than a thousand years, until once 
more the spirit of inquiry breaks through the certainties of 
the Middle Ages and gives us the dawn of the Modern Age, 
of science, i.e., of intelligence that is sure of itself and that 
can stand the test of the years. 



PART III 
BUILDING THE LARGER FOLKWAYS 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FOURTH ANSWER: THE CONSTRUCTION OF PLATO 

(427-347 B.C.) 

The answer which Socrates gave to the old Greek ques- 
tion ' ' What shall be done when the folkways break down ? ' ' 
is the one way out of the folkway situation. But it was 
not a way that the world could take at the time it was given. 
The world was still too unpracticed in the ways of this 
freedom, when the whole Greek social structure began to 
disappear. The people were still too close to the morbid 
terrors of the old primitive conceptions of life, too close to 
the anarchies of the days of Alcibiades, too lacking in any 
clear understanding of the way in which social order grows 
out of individual necessity, too distrustful of an educational 
doctrine that asserted that organizing ideas can grow up 
out of the soil of unorganized, even anarchical, impulses 
and individual feelings. 

From another point of view this program of Socrates 
was impossible. We now know that the world of knowl- 
edge and ideas does not grow by mere addition, by accumu- 
lation of fact by fact. It grows by hypotheses. Intelli- 
gence builds hypothetical structures and puts them to the 
test. If they stand the test, the world of knowledge has 
been greatly enlarged; if they fail, the world still moves 
on, because not all of life is involved in any one hypothesis. 
Socrates had no great social hypothesis, capable of stir- 
ring the imagination of the age, to offer. He had a method 
of developing knowledge or ideas. He seems to have 
thought that men could go on endlessly accumulating 

83 



84 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

knowledge and ideas, turning customs wrong side out and 
making opinions submit to analysis. Doubtless this pro- 
gram could have succeeded in a complete little world like 
Athens was in her days of isolation, but it could not be 
done in the cosmopolitan days that followed the war with 
Sparta. Greek life was soon to become chaos; the Greek 
world was soon to pass out of corporate existence; the 
"fatherland" was to dissolve into the mists of history. 
The Greek needed a real hypothesis of a permanent world 
to help him through this juncture. He needed assurance 
of the reality of his ideals, of the permanence of his con- 
ceptions of the Good and the True. He needed to become 
possessed of a new "fatherland." Plato supplied this in 
his wonderful hypothesis of a great spiritual world-order, 
existent before all earthly things, of which, indeed, the 
world and all created things are but shadowy copies. Soc- 
rates' doctrine of ideas also plays up into Plato's concep- 
tion in an admirable way. If, as the most complete result 
of this teaching of Plato's, the world is plunged back into 
a new folkway organization, we need not wonder too much. 
History shows one fact beyond dispute: freedom of the 
moral and intellectual sort is not easily attained, and is 
kept only by being endlessly rewon. 

He only wins his free'dom and existence 
Wlio daily conquers it anew. 

Plato's Problems. — Plato faced two great problems. The 
first was still that of Socrates: the internal decadence of 
the Greek life. The solution of this problem would doubt- 
less follow for him the lines laid down by his teacher, 
Socrates. But the second was a problem that was just be- 
coming evident in Socrates' time, but which became the 
most obvious characteristic of Plato's period: the political 
disintegration of the Greek world. Plato was about twen- 



THE CONSTEUCTION OF PLATO 85 

ty-three when Sparta conquered Athens. In his lifetime 
Sparta fell before Thebes. Thebes was conquered by her 
own sloth and indolence after the death of her great leader, 
Epaminondas. This meant the end of Greek political life 
in independent states. Sparta and Thebes had exhausted 
Athens; Athens and Thebes had crippled Sparta; Sparta 
and Athens had checked Thebes. All these once promising 
states had been destroyed in turn. Nothing but anarchy 
and confusion remained, and the prospect of conquest by 
some outside power. This was the background of Plato's 
life. 

Now an age like this needs something to help carry social 
and personal ideals safely through. The familiar "father- 
land" has failed. Where shall a new "fatherland" be 
found? Why do not the "ideas" of Socrates hold this dis- 
integrating world together? Why do not all individuals 
feel the cementing character of common knowledge and re- 
main true to the social ideal? These are questions that 
Socrates could not have answered. Plato must go more 
deeply into the problem. Plato believes in knowledge and 
ideas more fully, if possible, than did Socrates. But his 
knowledge and ideas are of a different sort. They have a 
different origin, a different nature, a different value, and 
a different function to perform. Let us examine these 
facts more fully. 

Plato's Doctrine of Ideas. — According to Socrates, the 
new social order will find its controls in ideas. But for him 
ideas have essentially a democratic origin ; they grow up 
out of the confusions of the common life, in the midst of the 
world's work, under the pressure of events, and in the 
process of development of individuals who feel the con- 
flicts of the social world about them and who respond to the 
stimulations of the social world in this new way. Thus 
we may see that, for Socrates, any one may produce ideas, 



86 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

any one may possess them ; no one in particular is responsi- 
ble for them, and no one in particular is authorized to pro- 
tect them or preserve them. Ideas are social products, and 
every member of the race must have his share in produc- 
ing and possessing and preserving them. Now this pro- 
gram will perhaps work out successfully in the midst of a 
fairly stable world, such as Socrates knew in his young man- 
hood, but in Plato's day the Athenian world goes com- 
pletely to ruin, and for such a time Plato offers a much 
more permanent, and therefore acceptable solution. 

For Plato ideas are quite as wonderful instruments of 
social organization and control as they are for Socrates. 
They are even more wonderful ; in fact, they are quite too 
wonderful to have had any such lowly origin as Socrates 
supposes. Ideas cannot owe their origin to the shifting, 
precarious conditions of social life. Moreover, ideas al- 
ways precede experiences. We have the idea of the thing 
before we have the thing; at least, the clear idea is neces- 
sary to a clear experience. Certainly ideas exist as pat- 
terns before anything worth making can be made. This 
proves that ideas exist before things. Things are but im- 
perfect copies of ideas ; ideas are the original reality of the 
world. The universe is first, a great system of ideas, ex- 
istent before all things; and the world is but **a shadow" 
or copy of some perfect, preexistent idea. Ideas are older 
than all things else, the eternal realities of which all earthly 
things are but shadowy copies. Ideas are the eternal forms 
or patterns, according to which all things were made or pat- 
terned. 

According to Plato, Socrates seems also to have been mis- 
taken in his conception of the nature of ideas. Socrates 
seems to have thought of ideas as "social bonds" growing 
up in the midst of, and out of, the very conditions of social 
life. Plato thinks of ideas as "social forms" coming down 



THE CONSTRUCTION OF PLATO 87 

upon the social world from the heaven of preexistent forms. 
Socrates seems to have thought that ideas are flexible, plas- 
tic, growing bonds; for Plato ideas seem to have a fixed 
character. They are finished, permanent forms; they are 
like final systems; they control life not by growing up 
within it, but by coming down upon it, surrounding it much 
as a hoop surrounds a barrel and holds the staves together. 

Socrates was therefore mistaken in his supposition that 
ideas could be the possession of all people. Since ideas are 
already in existence, they cannot be "developed"; they are 
already complete; they exist in perfection in the "Heaven 
of Ideas," a sort of eternal treasure-house of ideas. Hence 
they cannot become the possession of every one. Men can 
get them by becoming able to see behind the appearance of 
things into the eternal realities of things. This requires 
long discipline, not less than thirty-five years of severest 
training. Hence these ideas cannot be secured by every 
one; they are secured only by a very special class of the 
community, the philosophers. These are men who have a 
special "golden" nature, capable of long discipline and 
willing to undergo the training necessary to the perception 
of eternal truth. Ideas attained by such long processes 
are far too precious to be lightly made the possession of 
every one. Just as all are not capable of becoming "phi- 
losophers, ' ' so not all are to be trusted with ideas after they 
are secured. The education of the world by means of these 
ideas is also pretedermined, and is conditioned upon the 
natures of the people who make up society. We must now 
see what that education becomes under Plato's system of 
ideas. 

Plato's Hypothesis.— Unlike Socrates, Plato set up a 
rather complete and definite social hypothesis to bridge the 
civic crisis of his time. That hypothesis is too compre- 
hensive to be entered into here. It is the substance of 



88 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

his Republic. Only certain important phases of it can be 
considered here. 

According to this hypothesis, the world is, first, ideas, 
and afterward, things. Good conduct, good social rela- 
tionships, good government, therefore, must all be based 
upon clear grasp of ideas. This makes the acquisition of 
ideas the most important aspect of individual and social 
conduct. But all sorts of false representations and per- 
versions of ideas are floating around. This makes neces- 
sary the development of a particularly selected and quali- 
fied type of individual, the thinker or philosopher, whose 
business it shall be to discern ideas and deliver them au- 
thoritatively to the world. The state will be perfect only 
when it is governed by the philosopher. "Until then, phi- 
losophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world 
have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political great- 
ness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures 
who propose either to the exclusion of the other are com- 
pelled to stand aside, cities will never cease from ill, — no, 
nor the human race, as I believe, — and then only will our 
State have a possibility of life and behold the light of 
day. ' ' ^ That is to say, the only realities, the only things 
that will surely live through the ages of social confusion, 
are ideas. The state finds its lasting reality, its real exist- 
ence, in its ideas or ideals; the individual, also, can find 
his necessary "fatherland" only in some realm of ideas. 
The fixed and ideal order of the universe, slowly becoming 
known to the philosopher, gives absolute assurance of the 
permanence of man's moral and spiritual hopes. And 
education must bend its every effort to find and develop 
those men who are capable of becoming philosophers, for 
the salvation of the world depends upon them. 

But this practically makes of education a purely intel- 

1 "Republic," V, 473. 



THE CONSTRUCTION OF PLATO 89 

leetualistic matter. Man has no share, as Socrates sup- 
posed, in the development of ideas. A few men, the phi- 
losophers, are to discern them ; all the rest of the race are 
to learn them and be bound by them. Impulses, feelings, 
emotions, novelties in social stimulations and the like, all of 
which were so important to the Sophists and Socrates and 
out of which Socrates seems to have dimly felt all the new 
and larger social order was to come — these aspects of life 
are, for Plato, evils to be controlled by ideas. Knowledge 
comes down upon life from above, and it can be ''taken 
on" by nothing but the disciplined intellect. All that is 
good or true or beautiful, and therefore worthy of human 
endeavor, exists beforehand in the "Heaven of Ideas"; at 
the most, men can discover these preexistent treasures. 
Hence education for the philosopher consists of such disci- 
pline as will make him fit for this high task of discovering 
ideas; while education of all the other members of society 
consists of discipline in habits of subordination to the 
fixed aspects of the social system. 

Plato's Social System. — Plato interprets the movements 
of his times in such a way as to establish what may be 
called an intellectual aristocracy. He conceives of the so- 
cial world as being analogoivs to the nature of the individ- 
ual ; and he finds in the individual three aspects : intellect, 
the passions, and the desires or appetites. The virtue of 
intellect is prudence, or foresight ; the virtue of the pas- 
sions is fortitude, or fearlessness; the virtue of the appe- 
tites is temperance, or moderation. The hope of society 
lies, of course, in the intellect; and when the passions and 
the appetites lend their energies and fires in proper meas- 
ure to the support of the intellect, the life of the individual 
becomes rightly balanced and justice, as an individual af- 
fair, is established. Corresponding to this individual na- 
ture, with its threefold character, we find the social world 



90 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

manifests three aspects, or classes. First, there is the 
class of philosophers, whose business is the discernment of 
ideas, whose virtue is wisdom, and whose duty is leader- 
ship of the state. Second, there is the military class, whose 
business is the protection of the state, whose virtue is honor 
(in the military sense) and who owe obedience to the ruling 
class. And third, there is the "working class," whose 
business is producing the physical goods of the state, whose 
virtue is the creation of wealth, and whose lives are to be 
completely dictated by the military powers under the com- 
mands of the philosophers. Membership in these classes 
is not determined by birth. That one fact alone redeems 
Plato's conception from absolute Orientalism. Member- 
ship in these classes is determined by a sort of abstract 
''native fitness" as this comes out in the processes of edu- 
cation and training. Education thus becomes a process of 
sifting the whole rising generation with a view to deter- 
mining the respective class to which each shall belong ; and 
after this determination education becomes specialized to 
fit the members of each class for that life each will nor- 
mally live. 

All this seems to offer something like essential freedom, 
or rather like the pathway to freedom, for Plato bases the 
whole structure of civilization and the whole hope of hu- 
manity upon knowledge, ideas. Thus social progress, edu- 
cation, the development of the life of man religiously, po- 
litically, and esthetically — these are all to be controlled by 
the true insight of the philosopher. In this way all prog- 
ress, all education, all development, becomes subject to in- 
tellect and is dominated by intellectual consideration. Yet 
for just these reasons all is finally lost in the mazes of in- 
tellectualism. For Plato there is no real progress, as prog- 
ress is conceived in evolutionary terms. Whatever is to be 
exists already ; only^ the intellect has not yet discerned its 



THE CONSTRUCTION OF PLATO 91 

existence. Progress is therefore not a realization of new 
existence; it is merely the uncovering of the already ex- 
istent. That makes it wholly a matter of the intellect ; and 
intellectual progress seems to imply the eventual rooting 
out of all the evils of anarchic impulse, feeling, and emo- 
tion, a culmination that seems to be reached socially in the 
stern rigors of the Roman Empire. 

Plato's Influence. — This great social and educational 
program of Plato's states the hypothesis of an educational 
and social experiment at which the world worked rather 
strenuously for two thousand years. It may be called the 
most extensive scientific experiment the world has ever 
hitherto known. For if a scientific experiment essentially 
consists in putting an hypothesis to the test of actual con- 
ditions, then in this after-history of Platonism we have a 
scientific experiment. Plato's hypothesis that reality is 
idea and that therefore the whole world can be finally 
stated in and controlled by intellectual terms became the 
dominant social influence for nearly two thousand years. 
It was tested under a wonderful variety of social condi- 
tions, as we shall see, and though it failed, its failure is still 
a brilliant memory. Because the statement was not suf- 
ficiently exacting, its upholders called to their aid the 
more extreme hypothesis of Aristotle (to be noted shortly) 
and all but succeeded in proving the final truth of their 
great proposal. We shall come upon that full story little 
by little as we proceed. Here we need mention only that 
Plato really draws his scheme of social reorganization from 
the old folkway world, especially from the folkways of 
Sparta, which he idealizes and criticises and fits to his so- 
cial needs. Platonism is really a mighty attempt to jus- 
tify the folkway type of social organization, for Plato's 
ideas are but the explicit expression of the implicit cus- 
toms and habits of the old folkway worlds. To the mem- 



92 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ber of the old primitive group, life found its security and 
its finality in conformity to the controls of custom and 
habit. All individual caprice or impulse or initiative in 
the folkway world was of the nature of evil; it might 
bring about the final destruction of the group. This was 
so in Plato's universe. Plato's thesis might be stated in 
this wise: Life, i.e., the permanent form of life, is that 
fixed, criticised, and final system which is found only in 
the product of the disciplined intellect, corresponding to the 
fixed system of customs and habits of the folkways. In or- 
der to live fully, one must know, just as in the old folkway 
world the individual must be fully habituated. Salvation 
from the evils of the world comes through clear conceptions 
and conformity to the system which these clear concep- 
tions establish, just as salvation from the evils of the prim- 
itive world came from membership in and conformity to the 
system of the group. Impulses, originalities, initiatives, 
and the like are all evils to be controlled by ideas, just as 
in the folkway world all impulses were evils to be con- 
trolled by the customs of the group. The perfect life is a 
life of completely organized, adjusted, and balanced ideas, 
which includes the whole range of personal and social living 
and which has secured absolute control of all lesser details 
of existence, just as the perfect life in the folkway group 
was the life which had become completely habituated, with- 
out dangers or fears or signs of impending change either 
within or without, a sort of life which fulfills the old state- 
ment, "a people without a history," 

This large hypothesis was, as we have said, eagerly ac- 
cepted by the ages that followed Plato. The conditions of 
civilization for two thousand years helped to emphasize the 
importance and significance of this great interpretation of 
the world. The Roman Empire embodied it in political 
forms; the Middle Ages organized it into their religious 



THE CONSTRUCTION OF PLATO 93 

system, including in it, in one timeless whole, past, present, 
and future. It came to its full test at the climax of the 
Middle Ages. Education was controlled by this concep- 
tion through practically all these centuries. Almost all 
the efforts of all the powers of authority in state and church 
and school and social order were engaged for the great task 
of proving it true. But it failed! It failed to meet the 
larger tests which non-intellectual processes in the social 
world brought against it. At the height of its excellence 
and in the midst of its glory it was broken. 

For four or five centuries the modern world has been 
trying to escape from the lingering implications of endless 
fragments of this old hypothesis and from the false educa- 
tions that were developed in the ages when the hypothesis 
was still under scientific test. Emerson said, "Plato plays 
havoc with our originalities," meaning that since Plato no 
one has been able to say or think anything new. That is 
not true. But there is a sense in which Emerson's state- 
ment is most profoundly true. Under the dominance of 
the Platonic system there is scant room for anything new or 
original in the sense of science. To be sure, Plato has been 
one of the most "suggestive" thinkers of all time; many 
ages have returned to him for "inspiration," not the least 
of which was the Renaissance, the first full expression of 
the "modern spirit." But Plato's social and educational 
system offers no fundamental inspiration in the modern 
struggle for democracy; its structure is too much wrought 
out of and into the limitations of the folkway ages. In 
this sense Plato laid the foundations for the building up 
of the larger folkways of the Middle Ages ; and in this 
same sense escape from the domination of Plato consti- 
tutes the greatest problem of the present, whether in social 
organization, religious attitude, moral conception, or edu- 
cation. 



94 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

We must now go on to discover how for fifteen hundred 
years the task of rebuilding or building the larger ''folk- 
ways" under the leadership of Platonism went on; how 
diverse elements were conquered and absorbed; how new 
problems brought the development of new controls and new 
sanctions, all in the old spirit ; and how in due time all this 
building came to its great climax. We shall see how for 
fifteen centuries the human mind was subjected to the dis- 
cipline of this all-inclusive system. After that we shall 
face the task of seeing how the human mind broke away 
from this all-inclusive system, declared it inadequate, and 
undertook the building of new systems with new aims, new 
purposes, new materials, and new tools. But before tak- 
ing up this task we must linger for a moment to consider 
the fifth answer to the old question of Crito, the answer 
of Aristotle. 



CHAPTER X 

THE FIFTH ANSWER: THE WORK OF ARISTOTLE 

(386-322 B.C.) 

We need not linger long in our discussion of the work 
of Aristotle at this time, for, while his general point of 
view was more practicable than that of Socrates, and more 
scientific than that of Plato, it meant very little as an edu- 
cational program at that time, and it had little if any in- 
fluence upon the educational developments of the immedi- 
ately succeeding ages. We shall find its real values emerg- 
ing after fifteen hundred years, but we must note its main 
characteristics here. 

The Historic Background. — Aristotle was fortunate 
enough to live in that brief period when Philip of Macedon 
and Alexander the Great had once again made a secure 
social order in the midst of the universal social confusion. 
Such a period of social security and stability gave oppor- 
tunity for the reappearance of the old doctrine of Socrates, 
that knowledge, ideas, develop out of the processes of 
human experience. Aristotle renews this doctrine after a 
fashion. But the uncertainties of the past and the no less 
real uncertainties of the future made a full reliance upon 
that Socratic principle precarious, if not impossible. 
There must be, as in Plato, some principle not involved in 
the uncertainties of human experience upon which social 
order can depend. Hence Aristotle shows a curious blend- 
ing of attitudes that are both Socratic and Platonic in 
origin. 

Now in those stirring years from the great awakening in 

95 



96 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Greece that came with the Persian Wars to the age of 
Alexander there had been a wonderful extension of human 
knowledge, with wide explorations into the hidden regions 
of nature and human nature. Aristotle was the first to 
recognize the extent of these developments, and he made 
the first attempts to comprehend, organize, and systema- 
tize them. He thus attempts to gather together all the 
knowledges that have grown up (the Socratic attitude) 
and to enclose these materials in complete systems (the Pla- 
tonic attitude). Just as Alexander attempted to organize 
the civic turbulence of the times into the forms of a great 
world-empire, so Aristotle attempts to organize the intel- 
lectual turbulence of the age into logical systems. He 
gathered its treasures from all the past; he carried his in- 
vestigations into all the ranges of contemporary knowl- 
edge; he laid the foundations for intellectual dominion 
over the scattered elements of knowledge. 

Aristotle as Scientist. — Aristotle is the world's leading 
example of the deductive scientist. It is true that he was 
something of an observer, and, to the extent that observa- 
tion enters into the modem inductive method, Aristotle 
foreshadowed modern science. But observation covers a 
multitude of intellectual shortcomings. Aristotle fre- 
quently went observing with his mind already made up, in 
which case his "observations" succeeded in finding nothing 
but illustrations of his preconceived principles. Perhaps, 
since we shall have occasion to deal with this aspect of the 
subject again and again, it may be proper to discuss here 
the differences between various sorts of observation and 
various kinds of science. There are three definitely dis- 
tinct sorts of observation : first, observation with an * ' empty 
mind," if that be possible, — just "looking 'round." This 
begins nowhere, and ends nowhere ; it has no plan of work 
and no criteria of accomplishment. If it produces any- 



THE WORK OF ARISTOTLE 97 

thing, it is wholly by accident. Such "observation" is not 
science at aU. Second, observation with the mind already 
made up, with principles already established, and with 
categories finished. This begins with certainties and any- 
thing new comes to be merely an illustration of some old 
principles. This is the deductive method and is a proper 
part of science, but only when it is used for the purpose of 
clearing a way through some wilderness of experience which 
is later to be subjected to further critical reexamination. 
The third sort of observation is that of true induction, in 
which the mind has, of course, its principles, its categories, 
its standards to be used, but to be used as hypotheses, that 
is, to be held subject to correction, criticism, reconstruction, 
even to complete denial, if the facts warrant. It should be 
seen that in modern science there is a certain blending of 
the deductive and the inductive methods, but in ancient 
science there was practically nothing of the modern prin- 
ciple of inductive observation. Aristotle himself never 
fully reached this procedure. Aristotle is the "father of 
deductive science," the originator of many systematic be- 
ginnings of human knowledge, the first organizing mind 
giving form to many sciences, including psychology, logic, 
ethics, and esthetics. He was, for that time, what may 
rightly be called a "world-mind." He gave impetus to 
the organization of knowledge, an impetus that was to have 
great issue in the next, the so-called "Alexandrian" age. 

But he was essentially an "imperialist" in science, as 
Alexander was an imperialist in politics. His influence in 
the next age turned men toward compilation of existent 
knowledge and away from creative work. His comprehen- 
sive world-mind set all his followers to imitating. They 
all become second- or third-rate men, filling the library at 
Alexandria with extensive systematizations of, and com- 
mentaries upon, the world's existent knowledge. The sig- 



98 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

nificance of Aristotle in the history of thought and edu- 
cation is summed up by Eucken as follows: "He never 
has led a progressive movement of thought nor ever af- 
forded to any a valuable stimulus. But he has always 
proved valuable, in fact indispensable, whenever existing 
bodies of thought required extension, logical arrangement, 
and systematic completion. ' ' ^ 

The Influence of Aristotle. — Aside from a certain general 
stimulus to collecting and editing of existent materials, 
Aristotle failed of productive educational influence in the 
ancient world. Shortly after his death most of his works 
were lost or carried away into the East, to be the possession 
of Eastern scholars for a thousand years, to be lost to the 
memory of Europe. Plato filled the imaginations of men; 
his eternal world of ideal realities so much more com- 
pletely met the needs of the ages of confusion that fol- 
lowed Alexander 's death that Aristotle 's way of stating the 
problem was not missed. So for more than a thousand 
years he remained in the obscurity of the East. And when 
he came into the West again, he came not by the will of 
European influences, or from Greece ; he came by the way 
of Africa, brought into Europe by the Saracens, and his 
first interpreters to the astonished Middle Ages were cer- 
tain great philosophers in the universities of the Moslem 
Empire. 

But Aristotle came back into the consciousness of west- 
ern Europe at a time when he was most needed, when the 
final touches were wanting to the completion of the great 
folkways of the Middle Ages, when the work that was be- 
gun under the influence of Plato was about to fail, because 
Plato was, after all, too human. Aristotle arrived just in 
time to complete this work of the fifteen hundred years of 
Platonic influence which Plato himself could not complete. 

1 Eucken: "The Problem of Human Life," pp. 72-3. 



THE WORK OF ARISTOTLE 99 

His great capacity for organization, for building systems, 
came into excellent use. His logic was the one thing 
needed to squeeze all the rebellious human elements into 
the comprehensive world-system and make them submit to 
the central authority of existent fact^He thus completed 
and rounded off, in thought at least, the most magnificent 
conception of civilization and social order the world has 
ever known. He still speaks eloquently in the pages of 
Thomas Aquinas and Dante. 

But we must take leave of him here to follow the thread 
of system-building and system destruction until we meet 
him again, fifteen hundred years later, at the height of the 
Middle Ages. 



^CHAPTER XI 

THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 

History moves on, and old problems are lost to view in 
the changes of social conditions. The question which Crito 
asked Socrates had, by the time of Aristotle with his fifth 
answer, no more than a theoretical interest. Aristotle was 
not, in reality, answering that question at all. The Greek 
world had passed away; Alexander's brief empire of the 
world was passing likewise; Rome, looming larger in the 
West, was still unsuspected of world-ambitions. The com- 
mon life of the world, that world of work by which the 
philosophers are fed, had settled its own perplexing ques- 
tions in its own groping ways. The life of the intellect, at 
least of Platonic ideas, was not for it ! The intellectual 
greatness of the period from Socrates to Aristotle was not 
continued in the next centuries. The world settled down 
to the task of digesting and assimilating the materials 
already discovered. Rather, that was one of its interests, 
but another problem was keenly felt also, as we shall see. 

The Dominance of the Platonic Conception of the 
World. — Though the intellectual life of the world still cen- 
tered at Athens for another century at least, the period 
following Aristotle is called the Alexandrian, because the 
most striking influences and the most distinctive work came 
from Alexandria in Egypt. This age was a period of "fill- 
ing in" of the details of the great pictures that had been 
worked out by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Socrates, of 
course, was but a memory; Aristotle rapidly passed from 
sight; the dominant mood of the age is a Platonic mood. 

100 



THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 101 

There is need of a world beyond the world of the senses, 
a world of knowledge, of intellect, of ideas, into which the 
superior individual can retreat to find sanctuary from the 
storms of the world! This Platonic world of knowledge 
and ideas became the object of exploration by all the intel- 
ligence of the times. 

But there was a great dearth of master minds. Barren- 
ness and pedantry are almost completely the marks of the 
period. There was much research, but almost no creative 
activity of mind. Reverence for the old masters destroyed 
intellectual independence, producing formalism in place of 
freedom. There was almost no new writing of a construc- 
tive sort, but endless editions of the works of the mas- 
ters, such as grammars, commentaries, and expositions, 
appeared. In Alexandria various languages and cultures 
came into close contact. Comparative studies arose. 
Translations from one language to another were made, 
among them the translation of the Hebrew Bible into the 
Greek, giving that version known ever since as the "Sep- 
tuagint." Later there were "accommodations" between 
these various cultures, out of which arose some of the 
strange philosophies and religious and mystical sects of 
the Roman times. 

Development of Sects. — The teachings of the masters 
and the contacts of cultures brought about the development 
of philosophic "schools," each with its ideal of life. It 
must be noted that the ideal of the age was not man as a 
member of a social order, but a sort of abstract, individual 
man. What were the characteristics of this ideal individ- 
ual? These are, of course, educational as well as social 
ideals. Among the Greeks two such ideals appeared. 
First, the Stoic sage. For the sage the natural world is the 
expression of reason. Hence conformity with nature is 
conformity with reason ; convention is good when it is nat- 



102 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ural and reasonable. "Keep the straight course, following 
your own nature and the nature of the universe; and the 
way of both is one. " " Live with the gods. He lives with 
the gods who ever follows his mind and reason. ' ' This is a 
variation of the Platonic conception, but only a variation. 

The second of these later Greek ideals was that of the 
Epicurean philosopher; "The end of our living is to be 
free from pain (that is, from all useless desires) and fears. 
And when once we have reached this, all the tempest of 
the soul is laid." Hence all systems, whether of science, 
ethics, or religion, that tend to arouse and encourage men's 
fears or desires must be evil. The most complete freedom 
from desire, from fear, from ambition, from pain, is the 
most complete life. Compare with this Plato's "justice" 
as set forth in the Eepublic. 

In addition to these two dominant ideals of the Greek 
part of the Alexandrian world, it is worth while to call at- 
tention to another ideal that developed among the He- 
brews, the "Suffering Servant of Jehovah," since at a 
later time this ideal comes in upon the Greco-Roman world 
with conquering power. That ideal is expressed in the 
well-known words: "He was wounded for our transgres- 
sions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement 
of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are 
healed." A more intelligible statement of the same ideal 
is found in a later formulation; "He that would save 
his life must lose it ; he that is greatest among you, let him 
become the servant of all." This conception becomes the 
most effective weapon in the later struggles of mankind to 
escape from the iron rigors of the Roman Empire. 

The Fate of the Common Life. — The intellectualisms and 
the scholarship of Alexandria cut the world in two, into 
horizontal strata. An upper level of "superior" minds is 
busy with the culture of the world, its knowledge, its Intel- 



THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 103 

leetual interests. These build citadels of culture where 
they dwell apart from the world of common interests. At 
the same time, however, they must be fed and clothed. 
Hence on a lower level the workers must perform their 
allotted share, finding their satisfactions in their work and 
in their religion which promises them more or less of a 
happier time in some other world, or at least sweet forget- 
fulness in death. Now and then, perhaps, the workers 
found help in some crumb of culture that fell from the high 
tables of learning. But all too frequently common life, de- 
nied its share in the intelligence "which makes men free," 
falls a prey to all forms of religious doctrines which, while 
they interest and even soothe, may also destroy. The Alex- 
andrian Age gradually witnessed the growth of that terri- 
ble mingling of religious cults, good, bad, false, true, 
vicious, indifferent, which finally included everything 
known, and which in Athens added even one more touch — 
a statue to "The Unknown God." 

What could the education of the common life be in the 
midst of such developments? Little beyond the practice of 
daily toil. Socrates had promised something more, some 
share in the life of intelligence. But Plato had consigned 
the common mass to the life of unilluminated toil; and in 
the dominance of the Platonic view of the world through all 
this period there was no hope for the common life, save 
such hope as ever lies in work. The discipline of centu- 
ries of work will prepare the workers for the democracy 
of the far future. 

The Growth of Science. — At Alexandria some consider- 
able work in the physical sciences was attempted. It is in 
the Alexandrian Age that Euclid laid the foundations of 
geometry, Apollonius began the study of conic sections, 
Archimedes carried through some still-famous experiments 
in physics, Eratosthenes computed the diameter of the 



104 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

earth, Hero and Philo worked out some fundamental prin- 
ciples in dynamics, and Hipparclius laid the foundations of 
that ultimate knowledge of the universe which was summed 
up in the cosmography of Ptolemy. These were real 
achievements, but they seem to lie outside the currents of 
the times, to wait unnoticed for a thousand years. 

The Age of Schools. — On the whole, it was a juiceless 
age, a text-book age, an age of endless repetition of the au- 
thoritative statements of the masters, an age of schools. It 
was an age in which a type of conventionalized intellect 
was "made to order" out of the books, the apotheosis of 
Plato. Education came under the control of the state, at 
least in Athens. In Athens were the older schools, the 
Academy of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Stoa of the 
Stoics, the school of Isocrates the rhetorician, and finally, at 
a later date (probably in the second century a. d.), the uni- 
versity, which was really but the integration and extension 
of these older schools. In Alexandria the great library 
grew to amazing proportions; with it developed the mu- 
seum. But as we have seen that formalism was the char- 
acteristic of the age, we need not be surprised that the 
library, with its endless opportunities for copying authori- 
ties, was the central factor in the "University of Alexan- 
dria." 

In these schools grammar, rhetoric, logic and philosophy, 
now become little else than endless dialectic, were the 
studies. The basis of most of this development for four 
hundred years was reverence for the written word. Hence 
the age appears as one of the least creative in all history. 
But it performed a great service in the furtherance of the 
general Platonic organization of civilization ; it molded 
men's minds to the belief in authority, the fixed intellectual 
and moral order. It was a step toward the complete or- 
ganization of the civilized world into one gigantic system. 



THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 105 

It was educating the race to get ready for the all-inclusive 
folkways. 

The Coming of Rome. — As Rome rises more and more 
into prominence in the West, with her growing dominance 
of the political horizon, with her growing sense of world- 
empire and organized civic life, she comes to seem the em- 
bodiment of all authority, all system, all organization, all 
control. She may even be (who knows?) that ultimate 
political order, preexistent, eternal, the idea of social or- 
ganization, for which Plato longed. It is true that for a 
moment and instinctively, racially, the Greeks fought for 
their independence from Roman control. But one battle 
was enough to convince them of the uselessness of the 
struggle. Corinth was destroyed in 146 B.C., and the story 
of Greece as an independent nation or people came to an 
end. But Greek thought had been so long dominated by 
Platonic conceptions that Greece soon found herself quite 
at home in the social and political structure of the Romans, 
and she turned with vigor to the intellectual conquest of 
her conquerors. In this she was largely successful. What 
Rome lacked of power to theorize, Greece supplied; what 
Greece lacked of practicality, Rome supplied. The Roman 
political and social order furnished the security, the system, 
which made an admirable background for the actualization 
of that empire of control which Plato found to be the ideal 
of the universe, Rome furnished the necessary social 
structure out of which could be built up those larger folk- 
ways which should, in their good time, once more reduce 
the round of life to fixed and rigid routine. Greece fur- 
nished the intellectual content and the method, the logic 
and the sanctions, by which those larger folkways should 
be organized. Caesar was the political organizer, Plato the 
intellectual; and when Plato failed because he was too 
iuman to follow Roman authority further, Aristotle (as we 



106 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

have noted) came to the rescue and gave the Intellectual 
help that carried the effort through to full conclusion. 

We must now turn to a survey of the Roman contribu- 
tions to this process of reeonstructing the world. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE ROMAN CONTRIBUTION TO THE LARGER FOLKWAYS 

Education Under the Primitive Roman Folkways. — As 

in all primitive commuuities, education in early Rome was 
provided for in the customs, habits, and traditions of the 
folkways. Rome began as a small group among hostile 
neighboring groups. Her folkways developed out of these 
conditions, and her education repeated her folkways. 
Preservation of the group, keeping unchanged the customs, 
habits, and methods that had made her life successful so far, 
training of the youth in the preservation of the folkways, 
in military efficiency, and in the work by which the group 
lived — these activities made up the life and education. 
Obedience, reverence, industry, frugality, seriousness, 
courage, and eventual gravity were virtues native to Roman 
soil and Roman development. 

Children learned to read and write, if at all, in their 
own homes in the early period; and they learned the stir- 
ring military songs and ballads of common folklore. Girls 
learned the tasks of the housewife in their own homes ; boys 
probably largely followed in the footsteps of their fathers 
as to occupations. One thing seems sure: In the early 
centuries, while the Roman folkways remained intact, in- 
dustry and the other substantial civic virtues became or- 
ganized into the character of all the children. Constantia, 
constant firmness; virtus, the fortitude and strength of a 
man; pietas, reverence for the gods and for the folkways; 
modestas, self -repression ; and gravitas, the dignity fitting 

107 



108 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the man and the citizen — these were the five great virtues 
of manhood. 

There were no schools in the modern sense of the word. 
About the middle of the fifth century b. c. Rome came upon 
what may be called the "Oriental level" of her develop- 
ment. The so-called "Twelve Tables" of the law were writ- 
ten down; the folkways became more definite and fixed. 
From that time on education became more institutional, 
with these Tables as the curriculum.^ It may be seen from 
these Tables that the Roman was a complex character. He 
enjoyed the conflicts of the courts; he lacked imagination 
and idealisms; he was practical, systematic; he was ex- 
tremely pious, in the f olkway sense ; he was lofty-minded in 
thinking about his own community, brave in the presence 
of community dangers, obedient to the death when duty 
called, but he was at times coarse, rapacious, and cruel to 
his captured enemies and to those who did not belong to his 
own group, a virtue he shared with most primitive peoples. 

Later Educational Developments. — We note two main 
tendencies in the Roman character, viz., the tendency to- 
ward magnanimity of mind, and the tendency toward 
cruelty, coarseness, and rapacity. The development of 
Roman history helps each of these tendencies along. The 
coming of Greek culture tends to the development of the 
finer qualities, at first at least ; but the rise of imperial am- 
bitions and the growth of world-power tends to develop the 
other side. Let us see. 

In the middle of the third century b. c. Greek influence 
began to be felt in Rome, (ireek literature was introduced 
in translations and Latin literature was stimulated thereby. 
The Greek school soon began to take the place of the older 
Roman Ludus, or play-school. Greek teachers, mostly 
slaves, came to Rome, and the Greek language was studied. 

1 For these tables see Monroe : "Source Book of the History of 
.Education," pp. 334-45. 



ROME'S SHARE IN THE NEW FOLKWAYS 109 

Rhetoricians and philosophers also came or were devel- 
oped, and in such numbers as to frighten the senate. In 
161 B.C. and again in 92 b.c. efforts were made to stem the 
tide of this Greek influence and turn back the education 
of the people into the old folkway currents. "Our ances- 
tors have ordained what instruction it is fitting their chil- 
dren should receive and what schools they should attend. 
These novelties, contrary to the customs and instructions 
of our ancestors, we neither approve nor do they seem to us 
good." But the fight was a hopeless one, and though the 
progress of Greek culture was slow, it was sure ; and in the 
imperial period it completely triumphed as the method of 
school education. 

But in the meanwhile Roman energy was sweeping the 
neighboring nations into the protecting care of the growing 
empire. Roman courage, practicality, and imaginativeness 
made the Roman armies invincible. Rome drew on toward 
being the ruler of the world. Her practical courage and 
legal sense helped to organize discordant elements into a 
sort of imperial unity. Using brutality where that was 
needed, or practical intelligence where that was needed, she 
slowly conquered the world, brought to the endless ages of 
warfare the experience of the "Pax Romaua," won a world- 
wide peace by "fighting for it," and "civilized" whole peo- 
ples in a day by handing down her ready-made civilization 
from above. When it became apparent that Roman politi- 
cal machinery made such an admirable setting for the Pla- 
tonic culture of the Greeks, protest against Greek culture 
came to an end. Greek logic furnished the intellectual 
weapons for the justification of these Roman methods of 
civilizing the world ; and Roman legions were the objective 
embodiment of the absolute sway of Greek culture. The 
Roman army was an ideal representation of Plato's "mili- 
tary class," who were to take orders from the philosophers 



110 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

and to keep the common masses in control. To be sure, it 
can scarcely be claimed that many of the Roman emperors 
fulfilled Plato's ideal of a philosopher, but in the empire 
there was a governing class which gave orders to the sol- 
diery, and this impersonal military class, fully freed from 
all personal qualities, did keep the masses of men under 
control for the most part. This whole task of organization 
and administration of the empire was no small accomplish- 
ment, for the government was gradually extending its sway 
over wide and far-reaching areas. Within these were found 
many sorts of geographical condition, with many kinds of 
folkways, great variety of more or less localized industries 
and occupations, with their accompaniment of varying de- 
sires and prejudices, many languages and many religions. 
All of which had to be appreciated, largely coordinated, 
and administered from one capital under one general con- 
ception of law. It is true that this administrative concep- 
tion of the law was rather Stoic than Platonic. That is to 
say, the Roman found his basis for the conception of a uni- 
versal empire with a common law in the Stoic conception 
that nature, and especially human nature, embodied a "nat- 
ural law of reason" which, when fully understood and ap- 
plied, would give the world completely organized social 
order. This conception is, however, just a variant of the 
Platonic view; it is Platonism toned down to the needs of 
practical administration. At any rate, whether Platonic or 
Stoic, the Greeks furnish the organizing intelligence and 
the sense of an ideal and all-embracing moral and social 
order which the statesman must rule; the Romans furnish 
the practical mechanisms of discipline and control, and the 
actual working rules of the law. In these two aspects of 
experience, theory and practice, are laid the foundations 
of the Greco-Roman Empire, ruler and arbiter of the world 
in social custom, morality, religion, and education. 



ROME'S SHARE IN THE NEW FOLKWAYS 111 

Schools of the Imperial Period. — Just as back of the 
Greco-Roman program of conquest with its "benevolent as- 
similation" of alien peoples stood the Roman legions with 
their power to do what the governing powers determined, 
so back of the Greco-Roman program of civilization stood 
the "schoolmaster," or intellectual taskmaster. Wherever 
there was a school, there the arbitrary materials of Greek 
learning were imposed, or the no less intellectual materials 
of Latin culture. Of course, just as in old China, some 
youths learned these lessons. But the point is that educa- 
tion was simply conceived as a means of continuing the vic- 
torious progress of the Empire. Individuals, provinces, 
peoples, nations — these count for nothing as against the 
Empire. The Empire must prevail ; and though there were 
periods of good-natured tolerance when it was considered 
that any one who was not against the Empire was for it, 
yet whenever occasion arose the Empire could deal harshly 
with its rebellious subjects and did not hesitate to destroy 
in order to establish control. For instance, take the de- 
struction of the Jewish nation in 70 a.d. In the case of 
this nation refusal to accept some little share of Roman 
culture brought about the final catastrophe. 

The Ludus was the lowest school, dating from pre-Hel- 
lenic times perhaps. Reading and writing were taught, and 
some simple arithmetic with simple counters, etc. The 
method of teaching was the purely memorizing sort, in- 
cluding the imitating of the teacher. A militaristic sort of 
brutality pervaded the schools, and the teachers were noted 
more for their ability to "discipline" than for their power 
to teach. 

In the school of the Grammaticus foundations were laid in 
literature, the writings of the historians, perhaps, and some 
simple elements of very rudimentary science, including the 
little that was known of mathematics (which was very little 



112 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

and very unsatisfactory because the Eoman system of no- 
tation made progress practically impossible). We may add 
to these items, perhaps, a little music, with here and there 
a trifle of elementary philosophy or dialectic. 

The schools of rhetoric carried on the process, for a few 
selected students, into the training for public life, into the 
law courts, the forum, etc. Gradually the ** orator" came 
to be the highest ideal of the educated person; the term is 
rather inclusive and is not always clearly defined. Cicero 
(106-43 B.C.) first clearly set forth the ideal. For him the 
orator probably includes all that Cicero himself was — phi- 
losopher, rhetorician, soldier, statesman, patriot, historian, 
and poet. Later Quintilian (35-100 (?) a.d.), himself a 
teacher, set forth in great detail the same ideal, the orator, 
who was to be identical with the cultivated man of affairs 
and broad public interests. These conceptions of the edu- 
cated man represent the high tides of theorizing about edu- 
cation in the Roman Empire, at least in the West. They 
never became effective in the actual educational procedures 
of the Empire. The state controlled all education, and these 
ideals are far too liberal for the mood of the times. The 
actual social situation made a liberalized conception of edu- 
cation impossible of application. The imperial ideal and 
organization, fighting with savage or half -civilized peoples 
on many frontiers, could have little sympathy with any- 
thing liberal. Imperialism and a liberal education are not 
congenial. 

But if a liberal program had been possible in practice, 
there was no such program to be had. Psychology was not 
yet prepared to analyze the problem of education. The 
only conception of method was the imperial one of force, 
and in a mechanical age the conception of the processes by 
which the liberalizing of intelligence and the humanizing of 
society go on was utterly lacking. Socrates had proposed, 



ROME'S SHARE IN THE NEW FOLKWAYS 113 

it will be remembered, such a humanized education in Ath- 
ens generations ago, but there had been no room for it in 
Athens and there was less room for it in Rome. No, the 
world will wait many generations more for the full ex- 
ploration of the processes by which a liberal education 
comes to be an education, in which machinery, habit, custom, 
tradition, folkway, can be thwarted and the freed spirit can 
come into its own. Certainly in Rome such understanding 
will not arise, though maybe even in some distant part of 
the Empire some hint of it may appear. Who can tell? 

Put Rome is just Rome, extremely earnest and precise in 
her conceptions of law and in working out the consequences 
of law. The Romans were good-natured, for the most part, 
in their submission to law. At the same time they were 
"cold, calculating, selfish, without enthusiasm or the power 
of awakening enthusiasm," "proud, overbearing, cruel, 
rapacious," yet "distinguished by self-control and an iron 
will" and with few "graces of character," The Roman 
Empire was the instrument of a great organizing movement. 
The known world was brought together, mastered by Ro- 
man armies, controlled by Roman laws, bound together by 
great Roman roads. Ages, races, peoples, became ac- 
quainted within the Empire. The world was Romanized 
on its political side and Platonized on its intellectual side. 
This is a significant fact. We shall see more of its signifi- 
cance later. Now we must turn back for the purpose of 
summing up the general educational situation as it existed 
in the Greco-Roman Empire in the early centuries of the 
Christian Era, while the Christian movement was still 
merely a local disturbance in a remote corner of a distant 
province. We must see the nature of the Greco-Roman or- 
ganization more clearly, in order that we may appreciate 
more fully the next great stage in the development of the 
argument. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE EDUCATIONAL SITUATION IN THE GRECO-ROMAN EMPIRE 

We have already seen how the social world of the Greco- 
Roman Empire had become compacted of streams from 
many lands — peoples, customs, cultures, religions, morali- 
ties, and philosophies. We have seen how Greek thought, 
after Socrates, had become Platonized until it became ab- 
solute, systematized, intellectualistic, lacking in humanity, 
careless of personal impulses, individual energies, feelings 
and emotions. In this sense Plato and the Platonic influ- 
ence represent a return toward the old folkway life, with 
the same unintelligent carelessness of all that is personally 
worth while to the individual. We have seen, too, how the 
Roman Empire provides an admirable political background 
for this absolutism of thought, how the Roman army pro- 
vides the ideal tool for its "inculcation." We have seen 
how that fine originality of mind and spirit in Socrates, in 
Plato, and in Aristotle, became gradually organized into 
"knowledge," written down in the authorized texts and pre- 
sented with authority in the schools. "Live from within" 
becomes "Live according to the books," "Know thyself" 
becomes ' ' Know the books, ' ' and the free spirit of Socrates 
is lost in the machinery of political and intellectual life. 

We have seen, too, how under the surface of this over- 
intellectual but under-intelligent life there grew up in 
Alexandria, and eventually all over the Empire, a wild 
orgy of religious cults, "mysteries," theologies, and prac- 
tices which offered some human, even though degrading, 

114 



EDUCATION IN THE WORLD EMPIRE 115 

outlet from the sterilities of this absolute existence of the 
social order. This growth of cults and the like had largely 
come about through the meeting of the East and the 
West, those two diverse civilizations which had jarred at 
Marathon, which had overflowed each other in the Alex- 
andrian conquests, which had clashed in the West in the 
Punic Wars, and which had gradually interpenetrated 
until, in Rome at least and perhaps in many other places, 
all the cults of the world were known and good naturedly 
tolerated as mostly harmless. The Greek philosopher had 
become an absolutist absorbed in the contemplation of 
eternal truth or denying the existence of eternal truth, as 
struck his personal fancy. In either case he was useless 
to humanity. The Roman citizen had become politically 
''absolute." His rights and duties were not personal to 
him ; they were the inherited characteristics of his position 
as citizen. 

The common mass of mankind was, of course, brutalized 
under this system. Lacking all human rights, except the 
right to work, robbed by tax-gatherers, overridden by the 
soldiery, they took refuge in "religion," or they clung to 
the refuge of old religious customs and waited in "the 
illusions of hope." They became all too easily the servile 
classes of the Middle Ages and, "bowed with the weight 
of centuries, ' ' one of the tremendous problems of the whole 
modern period, as we shall see. 

One Additional Element. — Certain of these diverse social 
and educational elements had intrinsic merit sufficient to 
compel the world to conserve and use them in the building 
of the future civilization. In addition to the Greek intel- 
lectualism and the Roman practiealism, mention must be 
made of the Hebrew contribution to the constructive forces 
that were making the world. We have already seen the 
development of this Hebrew element through its primitive 



116 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

folkways up into its Oriental level of complete submersion 
in the written Law. The literalisms and moralisms of the 
Pharisee have passed into a term of reproach. But they 
are of one flesh with the intellectualisms of the Greek and 
the practicalisms of the Roman. This moralism had become 
completely institutionalized, with its penalties and punish- 
ments. It was "peculiar"; no other people of the Greco- 
Eoman world held so tenaciously to their fixed system. 
And it was "natural"; it has outlived all changes of place 
and time. But it was mechanical, unpersonal, careless of 
the finer human goods. "You tithe your mint, your anise, 
and your cummin, but you neglect the weightier matters of 
the Law: Justice, Mercy, and Truth." 

The Coalescence of These Characteristics. — The Hebrew 
element was, it is true, not much felt in the Roman world at 
large ; it was local. But wherever it was felt it tended to 
the production of the same impersonal and absolute re- 
sults as were produced by the intellectualism of Greek phil- 
osophy and the practicalism of Roman militaristic politics. 
But whether dominated by all these elements — intellectual- 
ism, practicalism, legalism — in combination or singly, hu- 
man life in the last century B.C. and in the first century 
A.D. became overwhelmingly mechanical, juiceless, non- 
human. It was over-intellectualized, over-legalized, over- 
practicalized, over-civilized. The common individual was a 
useful machine and supposed to be without feeling or in- 
telligence. Social interests had no intelligence in them ; 
they represented only the mechanics of the system. The 
common work of the world was servile, untouched by any 
real intelligence. Intellectual interests had no real con- 
nection with the social world. Education stifled feeling, 
impulse, and emotion, and life itself lost all its genuine 
significance. The whole life of man comes to a routine. 
The race has lost its way; it has no way, no path ahead. 



EDUCATION IN THE WORLD EMPIRE 117 

It has come to the end, to absolute system, to completion 
of all its tasks, to certainty and hence to hopelessness ! 

Certain Great Values in this Fixed Social Order. — De- 
spite all that has been said, there were, of course, certain 
fundamental values in this world-empire which the world 
will not willingly see pass away. Obedience to the law is 
of the essence of character; discipline of the intellect is of 
the essence of education; discipline of the heart is of the 
essence of personal integrity. These great teachings from 
Rome, Greece, and Judea are permanent gains. Only, may 
they not be presented in ways that would make them quite 
as effective, without at the same time making them so un- 
lovely, so objectionable? It was a grievous fault of the 
Greek intellectual life that it possessed no power after 
Socrates of making, or making place for, a new and finer 
social order. "With its lack of the idea of progress, it 
possessed no possibility of a thoroughgoing reconstruction, 
possessed no future and no hope. " ^ It was a grievous 
fault of the Roman practical life that it had no imagination 
with which to grasp the variety and beauty of the life that 
it so relentlessly trampled under foot. Rome should con- 
quer and save the world! But from what? From the 
very things, though Rome never knew it, that made life at 
all worth while ! It was the grievous fault of the pharisa- 
ism of the Hebrews that it could live in the midst of a world 
of serene great beauties, the spiritual realities of the great 
prophets of its own past, and still could spend its ener- 
gies and time in "straining at gnats." The mighty moral 
meanings of life had been sighted by the Greeks and the 
Hebrew prophets. Socrates had once lived, as had also 
Amos and Isaiah and Jeremiah; there had even once been 
a Republic, with its "tribunes of the people" in Rome. 
But liberty, freedom, intelligence, democracy, a greatly ere-. 

1 Eucken : "Problem of Human Life," p. 126. 



118 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ative vision of the future — these are elusive and cannot be 
kept except by ' ' eternal vigilance. ' ' We do not know this 
even yet. Hence we should not greatly wonder that in 
that distant age, with confusion behind it, with the tramp 
of mighty armies sounding through it, and with the rumors 
of still other confusions to come out of the wilderness of 
the North, men should cling to the machinery of life and 
let the spirit go ! 

It was a world in which education could merely follow 
the conventional round, the academic routine, the endless 
repetition of sentences without outlook of any kind. Chil- 
dren must be educated, just as the barbarian must be civ- 
ilized. Hence in Greek lyceum, or Roman grammaticus, 
or Hebrew synagogue the child heard only: ''Learn your 
lessons; repeat your sentences; practice your rules." 
What wonder that the tired Roman school-boy should draw, 
for the liberation of his weary mind, the picture of the ass 
working at the mill, inscribing under his drawing the brief 
legend; ** Labor on, little ass, as I have labored, and may 
it profit you as much"! 

What wonder that there grew up within that juiceless 
world the feeling that the significance of the world and of 
life had been lost; that the absolute system of the world, 
by means of which man was to have been saved, but added 
in some mysterious but certain way to the world's confu- 
sion; that the certainties of the age were a ghastly jest; 
that on this plain and certain way the race had yet wan- 
dered from the true way; that in the full blaze of this 
noonday literalism humanity was lost! 

Says a modern writer: 

"The whole age was filled with a sense of spiritual unrest. 
The rapidly increasing corruption of the ruling class, the glar- 
ing contrasts of luxury and misery, the insecurity of life and 
property, the sense of world-weariness which marked the passing 



EDUCATION IN THE WORLD EMPIRE 119 

away of moral enthusiasms, all brought home to men the feel- 
ing that the world was growing old, and that some catastrophe 
was impending. The new sense of sin and evil was fast out- 
growing the ability of the (most sincere thinkers) to cope with 
it. The ideal of virtue was felt by bitter experience to be beyond 
the reach of unaided human effort; some higher power must 
intervene to save us, if we are to reach salvation." ^ 

A writer of the period describes the corruptions of the 
age, and suggests that the mind of the age had become 
"reprobate," "being filled with all unrighteousness, for- 
nication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of 
envy, murder, dissension, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 
backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boastful, in- 
ventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without un- 
derstanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, 
implacable, unmerciful ; who knowing . . . that they which 
commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the 
same, but have pleasure in them that do them. ' ' ^ 

All this seems the inevitable result of an over-intellectual, 
over-mechanical organization of society. The feelings had 
been eliminated from the world ; emotions were out of date. 
Yet the search for a "salvation" that could be approved 
by the intellect had resulted in the destruction of all that 
was finest in the older social orders. There must be some 
other interpretation of the meaning of life, or else life is 
lost in unspeakable degradation and the race is lost in the 
toils of its own devising: it has put a part of life for the 
whole of life and is sunken in a beastly materialism. 
Whence shall the possibility of escape, or salvation, come? 
That shall engage us in the next chapter. 

1 Rogers, "Student's History of Philosophy," pp. 171-3. 

2 Romans, Ch. I, w. 28-32. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE PROTEST OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY AGAINST THE CHAR- 
ACTERISTICS OF GRECO-ROMAN-HEBREW CIVILIZATION 

The Historic Roots of the New Movement. — A man 

named Socrates had once lived in Athens, teaching : ' ' Men 
of Athens, I would persuade you, old and young alike, not 
to take thought for your persons or your properties, but 
first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of 
your souls, I tell you that virtue is not given by money, 
but that from virtue come money and every other good of 
man, public as well as private." ^ 

A man named Amos had once lived in Judea, teaching: 
"Thus saith Jehovah, 'I hate, I despise your feasts, your 
conventional assemblies, your official music; but I would 
that justice might roll down as the waters and righteous- 
ness as a mighty stream. ' " ^ 

And even in Rome a man named Tiberius Gracchus had 
once lived to say: "The wild beasts of Italy have their 
dens, but the brave men who spill their blood for her are 
without homes or settled habitations. Their generals do 
but mock them when they exhort their men to fight for their 
sepulchers and the gods of their hearths; for among such 
numbers there is perhaps not one who has an ancestral 
altar. The private soldiers fight and die to advance the 
luxury of the great, and they are called masters of the 
world without having a sod to call their own, ' ' 

Thus it will be seen that not always in Greece and Judea, 

1 Plato's, "The Apology," 

2 Amos, 3, ii-iv. 

120 



PROTEST OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 121 

nor even in Rome, had the heartless voice of a mechanical 
civilization been dominant. Socrates had, indeed, attested 
his sincerity with his death ; Amos had defied the authori- 
ties to molest him ; Gracchus had dared the Senate to do its 
worst, and taken the penalty. But these incidents prove 
that there is something in humanity that is not accounted 
for in an age of intellectualisms, practicalisms, legalisms, 
and militarisms. Deep under the surface of such an age 
energies are buried that will yet come to light and life. A 
mechanical age must always lose its way, its soul, its very 
self; but the salvation that it needs will come, and it will 
come, it must come, from within. So primitive Christian- 
ity appeared. 

The Nature of Primitive Christianity. — The Christian 
movement in its primitive aspects represents a distinct re- 
surgence of life from its natural depths and sources, what- 
ever those sources may be. It is of the nature of a genu- 
ine impulse — life, energy, feeling, emotion, purpose well- 
ing up from within, out of the individual, out of Man, out 
of the universe, overflowing the conventional channels of 
life and daring to live in ways that are not permitted by a 
machine-made age or civilization. 

It is the rediscovery of the individual, lost and forgotten 
since Socrates in Athens, since Jeremiah in Judea, since 
the Gracchi in Rome. It is the restatement of an ancient 
hope that life is spirit, not flesh, soul, not machine, feeling 
and emotion, not bare intellect. It is the denial of the 
finality of a fixed and mechanical social order. It is the 
hope of a social order based on the inner and spiritual life 
and needs of society, an order in which the individual may 
find his own personal freedom as a member of a social fel- 
lowship. It gives the direct challenge to all forms of in- 
tellectualisms, practicalisms, legalisms, literalisms, and mil- 
itarisms. Plato had said, "The world is made of ideas"; 



122 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Jesus said, ''Build your world out of love and service and 
sympathy." Roman militarism had said, "Buttress your 
liberties with forts, arsenals, and legions of soldiers"; 
Jesus said, ''The truth alone can make you free." The 
Scribes and Pharisees had said, "Cursed is the man that 
knows not the Law"; Jesus said, "Love is the fulfillment of 
all law." In place of the philosopher, the moralist, or the 
soldier, Jesus sets up a little child and says, "Of such is 
the real social order of the future to be made." In all 
these things the founder of this movement seems to be 
saying: "Man is a part of the creative energy of the 
universe ; he shall create his own moral order, his own spir- 
itual universe in which to live. Local legalisms, barren 
civic formalisms, heartless militarisms, lifeless intellectual- 
isms, all are wrong because they make men the toys of 
circumstances, victims of their own environments, slaves 
of their age, or of some dead past. But man is to master 
his circumstances, he is to overcome the degradations of his 
environment, he is to remake his age, he is to outlive the 
past." 

Three Essential Elements. — In the message of primitive 
Christianity life seems to be made up of three main ele- 
ments. First, instead of its being dependent upon legal- 
istic systems of conduct, formal learning, or the doctrines 
of the books, life is to be spontaneous, welling up out of the 
springs of existence and expressing itself in love and serv- 
ice. Man has immediate access to the sources of inspira- 
tion ; books are not necessary nor are special classes of men, 
though these may be of service in their proper relation- 
ships. 

Second, men need truth. Truth is not a final thing, a 
complete system, closed and dogmatic. Truth is something 
to be everlastingly searched after, and life is in the activity 
of this search for the truth, not in the mere possession of 



PROTEST OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 123 

Bomething found, some absolute value to be attained once 
for all. 

Third, life moves onward, forward, not by the spinning 
of long and subtle arguments, but by the simple and benef- 
icent processes of growth from within. ''The kingdom of 
Heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which at first is 
the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it becomes a 
mighty tree, filling the earth." The processes of growth 
can be trusted; these are more reliable for progress than 
institutions which are usually but remnants of old folk- 
ways. 

On the psychological side primitive Christianity seems to 
be rooted deep in the primitive feelings, in the impulses 
and sympathies. It does not deny the intellectual. In- 
deed, a close examination will show that of all ancient at- 
tempts to get at the real meaning of life Christianity gives 
the most permanent basis for a doctrine of the intellectual 
life which will satisfy the psychology of our own times. It 
demands that the intellect shall be the servant of the more 
fundamental aspects of life, and that books and all other 
products of the intellectual life shall consent to minister to 
life, not attempt to dominate and control it. 

On the social side Christianity is rooted deep in the be- 
lief advanced by Socrates that man is of the nature of the 
universe, not a fallen angel or a stranger in an evil world ; 
that the universal good is within him, if it can have the 
chance it needs for growth; that the ultimate good of 
society is to be found in the socialized responsibility of the 
individual and in the continuous contribution of such in- 
dividuals to the world's needs, this being of course in dis- 
tinction from the doctrine of the Empire, that the final 
good of society is found in the fixed systems, doctrines, 
creeds, and institutions that have been developed to date 
and which are used as instruments for measuring the in- 



124 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

dividual, for compelling his conformity and making him 
an acceptable fraction of a social whole. According to this 
more human outlook of primitive Christianity, individuals 
need to be helped to grow, not out of their impulses but by 
means of them, into lives of love and service and sympa- 
thy and the broadest humanity; and not apart from the 
world in special exercises and experiences, but in the very 
midst of the world 's tasks and experiences. 

Primitive Christianity and Institutionalism. — The doc- 
trine of growth is, as we have seen, one of the central ele- 
ments of this new movement. We have encountered this 
doctrine before, in a primitive form, in Socrates; we shall 
encounter it again, in more sophisticated form, in the mod- 
ern world. Here we must note that this is the particular 
aspect of the movement that comes into severest conflict 
with current institutions. Perhaps the clearest way of ex- 
pressing this conflict is by saying that all the way through 
the teaching of primitive Christianity the implication is 
plain that there is quite as much need of the salvation of 
institutions as of the salvation of individuals. Institutions 
need to be redeemed from their stagnation, their decadence, 
their assumptions of traditional authority to dominate and 
control all the life of Man! Institutions are necessary to 
life. Aristotle had caught some glimpse of this and re- 
flected it in his saying that "only in the state does the 
individual achieve independence and completeness of life"; 
individuals must be saved from their casual and fleeting 
impulses and helped to reach the substantial and permanent 
levels of living. But as we have seen in earlier sections of 
this study, one of the most constant tendencies in human 
nature is the tendency toward habit and the acceptance of 
some more or less accidental level of the folkways as the 
final reality of the world. The Roman Empire was but a 
greatly glorified system of habit which demanded certain 



PROTEST OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 125 

developments of the individual and forbade other develop- 
ments; individuals achieved certain freedoms within the 
Empire and were denied other freedoms. No level of habit, 
that is to say, no system of institutions can ever assure 
ultimate freedom. The lasting good of life is not found 
in any set of institutions, in any system of folkways or any 
level of custom, not even of "civilized" custom. Nor is it 
found in the opinions of the "wise men" whose lives have 
become organized into some partial world of habit. No, 
the lasting good of the world is a promise not of words, but 
of life itself in its endless renewals ; it is found in the un- 
spoiled nature of the little child. It is not the child that is 
the promise; it is the endless renewal of unhabituated life 
that is the promise, and this is the most fundamental criti- 
cism of institutionalism that the world knows. The hope 
of the world is not primarily in what the world has accu- 
mulated of the accomplishments of life ; it is rather in what 
the world has yet to learn from the very nature of life 
itself as that is revealed in untutored measure in the end- 
lessly renewing generations. Not institutions, but life it- 
self, is the hope of the world. 

The Redemption of Civilization. — We have seen in an 
earlier section that the institutionalism of many kinds in 
the Empire had tended to burden the world with the feeling 
that the race had lost its way and had fallen into the 
clutches of a mechanical social system which could boast of 
its intellectual life on the one hand, while it ignored its 
moral degeneration on the other. Contemporary religious 
writers describe this moral break in the unity of human 
life. We have noted one such description in a previous 
section. As a matter of fact, the universe itself seemed to 
have been riven into two rival realms, as in the Persian 
religious doctrines, — the realm of goodness, or light, and 
the realm of evil, or darkness. The one realm claimed to 



126 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

be in possession of reason, intelligence, and to represent the 
organized system of society which Plato had described in 
such glowing terms; the other was the world of unreason, 
of evil and misery, that "outer darkness" from which 
Greek intellect had striven to release the race. These two 
worlds stood over against each other. Civilization claimed 
to be marching with the former, with resounding doctrines, 
stern laws, and invincible legions, but the latter seemed 
always to be hanging on the flanks of the other. Darkness 
seemed always about to swallow up the light, to overwhelm 
the forces of civilization and order. The defect in all the 
ancient civilizations lay in their limited outlooks. The 
ancient peoples never escaped from their primitive folk- 
way characteristics. To the Jew, all the rest of the world 
was "gentile"; to the Greek, all else was "barbarian." It 
is true that occasionally there appeared for a moment a 
particular individual who rose above this narrower folkway 
acceptance of life. A Roman poet could say, "Nothing 
human lies outside my interest, ' ' but the Founder of Chris- 
tianity seems to have been the first who actually attempted 
to live that doctrine, and there is some doubt as to whether 
he always maintained that ideal. He calls himself not the 
Son of Abraham, but the ' ' Son of Man " ; he claimed to be 
not a Jew, but a human being. Yet it is reported of him 
that he once said, ' ' My mission is to none but the House of 
Israel." That may have been said for the purpose of 
disarming the suspicions of the Jews, however. At any 
rate, there was within his doctrines and his life the possibil- 
ity of a genuine humanity, as there never was in the Greek 
thought or in the Roman social order. Hence there is more 
hope for humanity in the Christian doctrine than in the 
Greek. In fact, the mighty civilization developed by 
Greek reason into an exclusive social order must be saved, 
reconstituted, humanized by the sympathies and love that 



PROTEST OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 127 

lie at the heart of the Christian movement, if human his- 
tory is to have any real future. Let us note how this is to 
be done. 

Greek thought conceived a moral order of civilization 
that should be perfect, finished, complete; after Socrates, 
Greek thinking could not endure the thought of the un- 
finished, the incomplete. The moral and educational prob- 
lem for the Greek, therefore, consisted in realizing this 
complete moral environment and in bringing men into 
harmonious relationships with it, so that their own lives 
should become as complete. Hence the task of "civiliza- 
tion" among the Greeks was, as we have already seen, pri- 
marily an intellectual one. Knowledge was what man 
needed to make him as complete as the moral order that 
was round about him. But this doctrine was based on the 
hypothesis that there is a fully developed and final moral 
order in the universe to which men may conform, to which 
they must conform if their lives are to be saved from in- 
completeness, lawlessness, and lower impulses. 

Such a doctrine seems very plausible and even beautiful. 
But if we are to judge of the truth of an hypothesis by its 
workings in actual experience, this doctrine falls far short 
of the desirable. Such a fully developed moral order may 
exist, but if so, it is not even yet known to humanity ; and if 
any moral order presents itself to men as the fully devel- 
oped order of the universe, it can be assumed that it is not 
genuine. It is some old folkway system, some non-intelli- 
gent organization of customs of even more primitive life 
erecting itself into a final moral system and presenting 
itself as having absolute moral authority. But such a con- 
ception of life prevents a real civilization, for it turns 
actual intelligence backward into a formal obedience, a 
conformity to old fixed conditions. It is the most funda- 
mental merit of the Christian doctrine that it gives to life 



128 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

a forward look toward unrealized and, indeed, toward as 
yet unseen goals ; it suggests that the task of life is not 
merely human conformity to a rigid system. Such con- 
formity, following the letter of the law, kills the spirit of 
man. The task of life is the development of new and no- 
bler social orders, the creation of new worlds of moral and 
spiritual values. Man is to be not merely conf ormative ; 
he is to be creative; he is to share in the work of making 
the nobler worlds. And this requires something more 
fundamental than knowledge. It requires, first of all, a 
new heart! It requires that the individual shall find for 
his life a new direction. It demands and secures the re- 
lease of new energies. In short, it gives to the soul of 
man a new inner life, and it converts the passive negations 
of the Greek conception of life into active and positive pur- 
poses, regenerating and exercising all the latent energies of 
the being. It is a new life surging up through the formal 
and artificial boundaries of the old conventional life and 
in its rich exuberance overturning old standards and mo- 
tives, going forth to fight with all the "powers of dark- 
ness" for the mastery of the world, ready to die for the joy 
of the faith that is revealed in this new experience. 

But in the second place, if man is to be creative in the 
moral world, he must learn a new use of knowledge and of 
his intelligence. Knowledge is not to bind him ; it is to set 
him free. His intelligence is not for the purpose of build- 
ing strong walls about him ; it is to help him apply knowl- 
edge in the working out of the problems of life; it is to 
serve him in developing the successive stages of his creative 
progress toward freedom. True, not all of this was ex- 
plicit in the teachings of Jesus. But it- was all im- 
plicit therein, and the logic of the Christian movement 
pointed in just such direction and made the movement most 
dangerous to the established social and intellectual order. 



PROTEST OF PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY 129 

Hence it is not to be wondered at that such a release of 
energy should be regarded with suspicion by all upholders 
of old social conditions whose privileges and honors were 
threatened by any essential social change. Especially is it 
easy to see why efforts were made to fight the new move- 
ment, to destroy it, to stamp it out. Its founder was put 
to death, its exponents persecuted, imprisoned, and killed. 
Yet all such efforts failed. 

There remained, therefore, but one thing to do: these 
destructive, revolutionary energies must be drained off 
into formal and harmless channels and conventionalized 
into meaninglessness. Its living energies must be turned 
into barren theologisms, into dreary intellectualisms which 
could be made to take the place of and to subdue the old- 
time passionate energies of the movement. For "civiliza- 
tion must be saved" from this new destructive movement. 
"It interferes with our profits" was the reason given by 
the silversmiths of Ephesus for their determination to root 
it out.^ 

The methods used in "saving civilization" from the full 
influence of the movement will be set forth in the next 
section. 

iThe Acts, 19. 



CHAPTER XV 

CHRISTIANITY BECOMES HARMONIZED TO THE ABSOLUTE 
EMPIRE 

We have seen the sort of world into which the protest 
of primitive Christianity came. Politically organized and 
controlled from Rome, intellectually dominated by the ab- 
solute metaphysics and the seemingly invincible logic of 
Greece, that world loomed ever larger through the cen- 
turies as a gigantic civilization-machine before which noth- 
ing weak could long endure. **A voice crying in the wil- 
derness," how long should primitive Christianity be heard 
above the tumult and the shouting of the world? "A reed 
shaken by the wind," how long could it stand before the 
"progress of civilization"? 

Forces that Compel Uniformity. — The message and 
spirit of primitive Christianity were so profoundly revolu- 
tionary that the authorities of the age were compelled to 
do one of two things: they must either confess civilization 
in the wrong and submit to the leadership of this ''de- 
spised Nazareue, ' ' or they must put the leaders of the move- 
ment into postions where their influence could be safely 
controlled. Already the founder of the movement had met 
the fate of Socrates in Athens. But followers became too 
numerous to be dealt with in this summary manner, though 
great efforts were made in this direction. Of course insti- 
tutions like the state may not willingly and freely declare 
themselves in the wrong. Hence but one course was open. 
Vhe life and message of primitive Christianity had to be 
reckoned with. Here was a moral ideal of singular beauty 

130 



CHRISTIANITY BECOMES ABSOLUTE 131 

and purity, a type of life that made a wonderful appeal 
to a weary world. There was a real danger that this ideal 
might conquer the mighty fortress of civilization by the 
slow processes of individual conversion. Such fatal conse- 
quences must be guarded against; primitive Christianity 
must be moralized, systematized, intellectualized, institu- 
tionalized. It must be made to fit into the absolute sys- 
tem of the Empire; it must become subjected to Greek 
logical forms and to Roman political control. In this way 
alone could the dangers implicit in it be securely avoided. 

The task was not difficult. Ideals must be kept pure; 
hence they must be stated in pure and final forms. Moral 
purposes must be protected from the contaminations of the 
world; hence there must be definite standards of conduct. 
Thinking must end in truth ; hence there must be definite 
standards of ''straight thinking," or orthodoxy. Hence, 
too, there must be authorized bodies of men who shall 
determine the purity of ideals, the standards of 
conduct, the tests of orthodoxy. All these things 
seem perfectly legitimate. But it is the most diffi- 
cult of matters to determine when ideals, conduct, and 
thinking pass over from being the actual expression of an 
inner spirit and become merely mechanical conformity to 
external standards, forms, and rules. We shall have oc- 
casion to note this fact again and again. One age lives 
out of the seemingly boundless resources of its moral aspira- 
tions ; this is life, indeed. But in its natural desire to make 
sure that the next age shall enjoy the same abundant life, 
it presses down upon that rising age standards of living, 
feeling, and thinking which come as purely external regu- 
lations to the younger age; and the older generations have 
never been able to understand the ''rebelliousness" of the 
younger, or to see that what is "life" in one generation 
may be nothing but machinery in the next. 



132 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

At any rate, and without going too far into the mere 
details of the matter, the Christian life gradually became 
moralized into rather definite practices. Rituals and cere- 
monials that could be used as tests of membership and fel- 
lowship came into being, creeds were gradually agreed 
upon, and before many generations had passed, i.e., early 
in the fourth century, all these matters had come under 
the control and the sanction of the political authorities. 
Christianity had become the accepted and acknowledged 
religion of the state. From this time forward, with slight 
reverses now and then, the prestige of the new movement 
grew rapidly, and its primitive moral vigor declined in a 
somewhat similar ratio. 

Greek philosophy supplied the intellectual framework for 
the creeds and theologies that made it possible for the sim- 
ple doctrines of early Christianity to become acceptable as 
the official religion of the world-empire. To be sure, this 
end was not won without many bitter conflicts. Greek 
learning was at first bitterly denounced by Christian lead- 
ers as being utterly opposed to the spirit of the new move- 
ment. But little by little it became apparent that Chris- 
tian beliefs needed systematic organization and effective 
intellectual control. Now, while there were many things 
in Greek thought that were repugnant to the moral sense 
of the Christians, even the simple-minded followers of the 
movement came gradually to see that in this Greek thought 
there were two distinct elements, viz., its content element, 
and its logical element, its facts or principles, and the form 
in which those facts or principles were stated and related. 
The former, or ethical element, was the objectionable ele- 
ment; the latter, or logical element, could be separated 
from the former, and it was seen that this logical element 
partook of no share in the general objection to Greek think- 
ing. This logical element was just the framework on 



CHRISTIANITY BECOMES ABSOLUTE 133 

which Greek ethical notions were strung. The obvious 
question arises : Is it not possible to strip these objection- 
able ethical elements off the framework and use this same 
logical structure in the organization of the content of 
Christian emotion and belief? Such a procedure would 
serve two worthy ends: it would help to redeem a noble 
logic from ignoble uses, and it would give to the Christian 
elements the intellectual stability that they so sadly needed. 

Results of These Processes. — Accordingly, little by lit- 
tle this new life lost its originality, its depth of emotion, 
its primitive assurances of living and growing truth, its 
fundamental reliance upon the processes of growth ; it sur- 
rendered, on its official side, to the forces of the age. And 
though, deep under all officialisms, some real life always re- 
mains, primitive Christianity was lost to the world for a 
thousand years. Life was intellectualized into set creeds, 
with their tests and penalties. The ideal of truth as a 
social product, gradually developing through the ages in 
the moral strivings of the race, was lost once again, as in 
Greece of old, and in its place came the doctrine of a final 
system of truth, the "faith once delivered to the saints." 
Over and above the natural world of moral effort appears 
the "heavenly world," the abode of God and all pure 
spirits, the hope of the world-weary, the final refuge of the 
oppressed, the means of escape from the problems of life. 

Beyond these developments we must note the growth of 
certain general philosophies of life whose purpose was to 
bring all the past cultures of the world, including Chris- 
tianity, into one general harmony, with, of course, a Chris- 
tian bias. Neoplatonism is the first of these attempts. 
But the problem is the task of the next thousand years, 
the task of the philosophers of the church — Augustine, the 
Scholastics, and finally Thomas Aquinas, the master of 
them all. The Platonic conception of an absolute system 



134 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

underlies all these efforts and dominates their final out- 
come, though Platonic conceptions are not quite equal to 
the last exacting stage in the task. 

Finally we must see that there was gradually growing 
up alongside all these efforts a great ecclesiastical organi- 
zation, the church, which should be the outward and insti- 
tutional embodiment of these absolute knowledges, stand- 
ards, and ideals, the judge of orthodoxy, the conservator of 
standards of faith and practice, the eventual master of 
even the state in the domination of the world. Its struc- 
ture gradually becomes hierarchical; it finds definite com- 
pletion in the papacy, when its domination of the minds 
of men and its control of institutions and of human des- 
tinies become absolute. 

In some such manner as this primitive Christianity came 
to abdicate its original social mission of stimulating the 
growth of the native impulses of goodness in the world of 
men, and it set up instead formal standards of living to 
which men must adhere before they could claim any of the 
benefits promised in the primitive "good news." This 
tendency was in evidence before the end of the first cen- 
tury. Jesus had preached a gospel of human salvation in 
the towns and cities of Galilee and even in Jerusalem. His 
follower, John, despairing of earthly cities and finding no 
hope for the race in human endeavors, pictured the hope 
of the world as residing in a "holy city," a "new Jeru- 
salem" not to be built by men, but "coming down out of 
heaven from God made ready as a bride adorned for her 
husband." That is to say, the world was to be saved, but 
not by any means existing upon the earth. Still later, as 
conditions in the Empire became less secure, and especially 
as fear of the northern barbarians grew, the hope of any 
security in any sort of a city of the earth grew dim. To 
St. Augustine in the fifth century the whole hope of the 



CHRISTIANITY BECOMES ABSOLUTE 135 

future passed from the earth; man's secure life was to be 
found only in an eventual "City of God" far from the 
turmoils of this world, "eternal in the heavens." This 
ideal of life dominates the imagination of the Middle Ages, 
as we shall see. The long struggle to win back belief in 
the reality of this world is of almost wholly modern origin. 
But its tenuous roots are to be found even in the Middle 
Ages. And one of those roots is traceable in the story 
of the rebuilding of cities as the habitations of men. Of 
this we shall see more later. 

One further phase of the story remains to be told. The 
value of the individual, so bravely asserted by Jesus, was 
forgotten in the growth of religious politics and the ma- 
chinery of officialdom. Primitive Christianity had seemed 
the charter of liberties of the individual soul. But the 
church became the official religious institution of the Em- 
pire, with an army at hand to make its authority sure. 
Under the mighty sweep of the imperial army, tribes were 
"converted" wholesale. A conquered nation might be* 
driven by hundreds, or even thousands, through a river tor 
baptism, and thus transformed "in the twinkling of an 
eye" from heathen into Christians. The church was thus 
inundated with the ignorant, who did not understand tlie 
significance of the movement. Its vital meaning for the in- 
dividual was lost, and the world-weary individual became 
the victim of one more world-encompassing machine. 
Church and state joined hands to keep the individual 
within bounds, here and hereafter. Indeed, the church, 
delivering ultimate doctrines to men through its official 
channels from God himself, becomes the final arbiter of 
human happiness and hope and destiny. Even the state is 
subordinate to the church, as the left hand is subordinate 
to the right. 

The church, or at least primitive Christianity, began as 



136 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

an expression of an inner life which was slowly to spread 
until, like the tree growing from the grain of mustard 
seed, its branches should fill the whole earth. But this 
inner life was under quick necessity of relating itself to 
the hard logic of Greek thought and the iron rigor of Ro- 
man imperialism. The conflict was short and decisive. 
That inner life dissolved in forced submission to these 
mighty externalities. And all that remains of it is a mem- 
ory that seems to make less unendurable the progress of 
that religio-political machine, Medieval civilization. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE IRRUPTION OF NORTHERN BARBARISM INTO THIS GRECO- 
ROMAN-CHRISTIAN EMPIRE FROM THE THIRD TO 
THE SIXTH CENTURY 

The logic of experience is more effective than the logic 
of obscure ideals or the logic of an abstract argument. 
What primitive Christianity failed to accomplish through 
its ideals and its simple arguments was emphatically ac- 
complished in the fourth and fifth centuries by the shock 
of barbarian invasion from the north. ' ' The Greco-Roman 
Empire is not the last word in human life, in social organi- 
zation, in political control, in general culture, in individual 
happiness; there are possibilities of individual and social 
development still unrealized, even undreamed by Greek 
philosophy, hidden in the unexplored future of humanity." 

This barbarian challenge to civilization demonstrated 
even more. It called in question, distinctly, the finality of 
the processes by which primitive Christianity had itself 
become harmonized to the absolute structure and purpose 
of the Empire. To be sure, that question was not to be an- 
swered until a full thousand years had passed; but it was 
in the course of events and it remained within the current 
of history, appearing above the surface now and again, 
waiting the development of a more substantial basis of ex- 
pression. But when the thousand years had passed it 
broke through the encompassing shell, the accumulated 
folkways, and changed the current of the world's life. 

Nature of this Barbarian Protest. — The Roman Empire 
was approaching social and moral exhaustion, notwith- 

137 



138 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

standing the fact that the Christian element had been ab- 
sorbed into its life and become the official religion. The 
causes were chiefly economic and political, the accumula- 
tion of decadent tendencies of centuries. Society had be- 
come quite completely stratified, from the imperial levels 
down to the peasant who had already become a serf, bound 
to the soil where he labored and changing masters as the 
land he tilled changed owners. By the fourth century the 
condition of these serfs had become the very limit of mis- 
ery. They must pay their unfair landlords outrageous 
rents and, in addition, they paid heavy taxes to the Em- 
pire. In the reign of Diocletian they arose in bloody re- 
volts against the upper classes in Gaul. The Empire was 
becoming as fixed in its structure as an Oriental despotism. 
It swarmed with tax-gatherers; it was said that ''they who 
received taxes were more than they who paid them." In 
short, through economic and political unintelligence the old 
social and moral fiber of the Empire was destroyed. Rome, 
as Rome, had no further contribution to make to civiliza- 
tion. 

The contrast between the virtues of the barbarians and 
the weaknesses of the Romans struck the age with vivid- 
ness and force. But there was nothing to be done about it. 
The old empire had no real place in it for the strength of 
the new peoples. It is true that the Roman army was 
gradually reconstituted through the coming in of barbarian 
recruits, but the result was the Romanizing of the recruit, 
not the strengthening of the Roman. And that older civ- 
ilization, now going to decay, was desperate before the 
influx of this new, primitive, and barbaric strength. Je- 
rome, in the early years of the fifth century, writes : 

Who could believe that Rome, built upon the conquest of the 
whole world, would fall to the ground; that the mother herself 
would become the tomb of her peoples . . . How could the tale 



PKOTEST OF NORTHERN BARBARISM 139 

be worthily told? How Rome has fought within her own bosom 
not for glory, but for preservation, — nay, how she has not even 
fought, but with gold and all her precious things has ransomed 
her life.^ 

Into this decadent world came the vigorous strength of 
the Barbarians. 

"The settlement of the Teutonic tribes was not merely 
the introduction of a new set of ideas and institutions . . . 
it was the introduction of fresh blood and youthful mind 
— the muscle and the brain which in the future were to do 
the larger share of the world's work." ^ 

Characteristics of the Teutomc Peoples. — "Fresh blood 
and youthful mind" — what may not these tremendous en- 
ergies accomplish in political, economic, social, ethical, re- 
ligious, and educational directions! These people brought 
with them three signiticant elements which were to be 
powerful components of the new civilization of the distant 
future. These three elements are: 

(1) The fundamental value of the individual, as such, 
as opposed to the individual as an atom in a great politico- 
social system. The very genius of the Teutonic life is 
expressed here. Great state-machines may develop, but in- 
dividual energy remains alive under the whole develop- 
ment, and in time the machine must reckon with this lasting 
energy of individual life and conscience. That this prim- 
itive factor has been perverted in certain modern Teutonic 
states does not affect the original fact. 

(2) The assemblies of the people, — those popular gather- 
ings which had become wrought into the very structure of 
the nature of these peoples. Out of these assemblies will 
come representative government, the actual control of the 
machinery of the state by the individuals who make up 

1 Robinson: "Readings in European History," Vol. I; p. 44f. 

2 Adams : "Civilization During the Middle Agea," Ch. V. 



140 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the state; and this will eventually mean the destruction of 
all absolute types of government. Democracy is bravely 
promised here. 

(3) The attitude of mind that can accept law as a grow- 
ing institution. Of course this is involved in the accept- 
ance of the individual and in the existence of the popular 
assemblies. But not all peoples accept what is involved 
in some of their underlying principles — law as a living 
outgrowth of life itself! Out of this will come such de- 
velopments as the English "Common Law," intelligence 
gradually becoming conscious of the conditions of life and 
adjusting itself to the demands of changing life and ex- 
perience, and the whole structure of the American political 
conception of law as the gradual and constantly changing 
interpretation and organization of the relationships of so- 
cial and industrial life. Intelligence is implied in this, in- 
telligence as the active, critical, destructive, and construct- 
ive energy of mind by which the outgrown is pared away 
and room for the new growth is assured. It is the very 
genius of the civilization of the West as opposed to the 
stagnant absolutisms of the East, and of the West when it 
becomes careless. 

The Question of the Future. — Now with all this almost 
passionate untamable sense of individuality, with their 
democratic assemblages of the whole people for the dis- 
cussion and determination of public questions, and with 
their willingness to meet the new conditions with new de- 
velopments of laws, these Teutonic peoples met the existent 
civilization of the South. That meeting meant ruin of the 
thousand years of toil : ' ' The result of an immigration 
which may be counted by hundreds of thousands is — that 
all the land is waste"! But it meant more than that, at 
least in the long run, after the first great joy of destruction 
had passed. To the simple Teutons the civilization of the 



PROTEST OF NORTHERN BARBARISM 141 

South possessed a certain preexistent quality. Carelessly 
they destroyed much that had value. How could it be 
otherwise? But for all that they were filled with a deep 
wonder, even reverence, in the presence of its mighty 
structures, its marvelous devices, its massive pomp and cir- 
cumstance. Something of the structure of old Roman so- 
cial order and political life remained. The church was 
taken over speedily by the conquerors; Roman law had 
been codified at Constantinople and was thus saved for the 
future of the world-civilization ; the scientific knowledge of 
the Greeks was not wholly lost or forgotten; the practical 
arts of the South, developed far beyond the levels of Teu- 
tonic knowledge, were preserved in the industries of the 
common people which went on still, although the world 
was being turned upside down. 

Thus these mighty types of energy and life met each 
other — the Roman, organized, fixed, substantial, massive, 
impressive, with the suggestion of eternality, of preexist- 
ence about it; the Teutonic, fluid, crude, unorganized, un- 
substantial, unconscious of its strength, but strong beyond 
the strength of age: "fresh blood and youthful mind." 
The latter, untutored, almost pathetically submits itself to 
the instruction of the former, and for a thousand years, 
more or less, steadily and readily sits at the feet of the 
wisdom of the South. And the older civilization, haughty 
in its consciousness of a mighty past, feels confident that, 
though conquered in battles and overrun of territory, its 
intellectual and spiritual superiority still promise eventual 
victory. The anarchy of the barbarian must yield at last 
to the order and control of the fixed system of the Empire. 

But is it fanciful to connect this irruption of fresh, even 
barbaric, energy with the energies of primitive Christian- 
ity, with the simple social logic of Socrates? Each of 
these movements entered a protest against the acceptance 



142 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

of a "closed world," a world of fixed, unchanging institu- 
tions, an absolute domain of "eternal ideas." Each seems 
to reveal the existence of something living in human life, 
something more permanent than institutions, more funda- 
mental than ideas, stronger than the mighty machinery 
of a world-empire. 

If this be so, we shall find herein the clue to the gather- 
ing of forces in the great medieval period. On the one 
hand we shall find the gathering of the systematized, the 
organized energies of the world; the traditional, the cus- 
tomary, the habitual tendencies; the political systems, the 
religious organizations, the social stratifications; and 
around all these the protecting care of a great philosophical 
development, the Platonic doctrine of the absolute order of 
the world which, accepted as the official philosophy of the 
church, will attempt to control with ruthless exactness the 
life of the individual both here and hereafter. And for 
its greater assurance this absolute control of life and des- 
tiny will organize an elaborate system of education within 
which all anarchic impulses, all individual energies, all 
originalities, will be carefully denied. Thus will the 
"larger folkways of medievalism" come gradually to com- 
pletion. 

On the other hand we shall find occasional expression of 
that deeper energy of the world. The individuality, the 
democracy, the progressiveness of the Teuton, the emo- 
tional values of primitive Christianity, the social intelli- 
gence urged by Socrates, have not vanished from the earth ; 
they are germinating beneath the soil of old civilizations, 
gaining strength for the conflicts that will surely come. 
Occasionally during these "dark ages" they try to meas- 
ure strength with the forces of control, but a thousand 
years must intervene, a thousand years of schooling, of 
discipline, before they are really ready for the conflict. 



PROTEST OF NORTHERN BARBARISM 143 

But considering both aspects of this situation the ques- 
tion of the future arises: In the days when Roman civili- 
zation was being buffeted by Teutonic barbarism, where 
was the hope of the future, the hope of civilization? Was 
it back with the older culture, the older civilization? Or 
was it with the new energy, with the "fresh blood and 
youthful mind"? 

And where, in any generation, is the supreme hope of the 
future? In the fixed institutions of that generation, in the 
finished ideals and ideas of the times, in the orthodox sys- 
tems? Or in the energies, the impulses, the aspirations, 
the enthusiasms of the "fresh blood and youthful mind"? 
In educational efforts, where is the real hope of the future ? 
In the school as a fixed institution, with its conventional 
tasks, its routine methods, and its accepted folkways? Or 
in the children of the new generation who come to call in 
question all conventional tasks, all routine methods, all ac- 
cepted folkways? 

The history of education knows no more important ques- 
tion than this. Indeed, it may turn out that the history 
of education is just the endless effort to answer this ques- 
tion, now in this way, now in that. For the world seems 
not long contented with either sort of answer. At any 
rate, however strange the contrast may appear, the great 
world-argument gathers through the Middle Ages, ready to 
develop into the modern world-problem. On the one hand 
is the principle of growth represented by such seemingly 
disparate factors as the work of Socrates in individual 
experience, the movement of primitive Christianity in the 
world's moral life, and the destructive effects of the bar- 
baric invasions; on the other hand, the mechanisms of 
institutionalism, whether in church, in state, in the social 
and industrial order, or in the pedantic thinking of the 
age. These are the antagonists in the slowly-gathering 



144 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

world-argument. Growth versus finished social mechan- 
ism! Development versus final folkway! Attention, in- 
novation, invention versus habit and tradition ! This shall 
be a battle worthy the attention of the ages. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE COMPLETION OP THE LARGER FOLKWAYS: 
' ' MEDIEVALISM ' ' 

"We have seen how Plato, caught in the drift of events 
that marked the period of disintegration of Greek political 
and social life, proposed to his age the magnificent hy- 
pothesis of an eternal world of ideas, the real world, change- 
less behind all changes in the world of experience, preex- 
istent, the form or pattern of all earthly things, determin- 
ing and controlling the nature and destiny of all human 
activities and institutions. We have seen how this concep- 
tion fitted into the political structure of the Roman Empire 
in its march toward world-control; how out of this union 
of the Greek idea and the Roman political structure the 
all-inclusive Greco-Roman Empire came into being — an ab- 
solute political empire which gradually absorbed all lesser 
political efforts into itself, an absolute intellectual empire 
which gradually triumphed over all protests and became 
the arbiter of all beliefs. We have seen how primitive 
Christianity was conquered and remade to fit the absolute 
intellectualism of this empire, although something of its 
primitive rebelliousness remained hidden under the surface 
of its outward conformings. And finally we have seen how 
the invading Teuton, who came destroying all before him, 
remained to wonder, to revere, and to sit modestly at the 
feet of this old system for a thousand years, even though 
he still kept his innermost nature concealed under the robes 
of his curiosity and his reverence. 

We have now to face this period of a thousand years of 

145 



146 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

conflict between order and disorder, between the estab- 
lished, though somewhat mutilated, forms of a preexistent 
civilization and the undisciplined energies of many primi- 
tive peoples who seem to pour through the centuries in an 
endless stream. We must consider how this old system of 
universal order gradually "harmonized" and "absorbed" 
all these diverse and discordant elements until it reached 
at length a magnificent culmination, — religious, political, 
economic, moral, social, and intellectual, — in the mighty 
thirteenth century and gave complete form to the most 
splendid organization of this one of the two fundamental 
interpretations of human life that the world has ever seen 
or is likely to see. But the story is long and the details 
endless ; hence we must give the outlines only, emphasizing 
the important forces and tendencies. 

The Uncertainties of the Middle Ages. — If proof were 
needed of our earlier proposal that "the race is educated 
by its experiences," such proof could be found in over- 
whelming measure in the story of the Middle Ages. It 
was a long period of terrible uncertainties. Consider 
these typical "uncertainties": 

(a) The Invasions. Beginning with the coming of the 
Huns from the East, there was almost no century for a 
thousand years that did not know the terrors of threat- 
ened or actual invasion. The Iluns, the various Germanic 
tribes, the Saracens, Hungarians, Northmen and Normans, 
Seljukian Turks, Tartars and Mongols of the Golden 
Horde, Ottoman Turks, — they follow fast on each other's 
heels, some to destroy and run away, some to remain and 
to help to build. 

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, 

Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, 

And loud amid the universal clamor 

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. 



THE STRUCTURE OF MEDIEVALISM 147 

It is not to be wondered at that out of these experiences 
some still echo the prayer taught in the midst of terror: 
"From the fury of the Northmen, Lord, deliver us!" ^ 

(h) Hungers and famines. Agriculture was still ex- 
tremely primitive and with the great masses of the people 
hunger was constant, while actual famines were not un- 
known. The peasant was "bound to the wheel of labor" 
and had to take the brunt of every untoward condition, 
including the lessening of food supplies. Burdened with 
a social structure expressing a certain Platonic complete- 
ness, "what to him were Plato and the swing of Pleiades?" 

(c) Diseases and epidemics. Modern ideas of sanita- 
tion were unknown. The minglings of the peoples devel- 
oped conditions for contagions, and epidemics of various 
kinds always menaced the peoples and occasionally swept 
away great numbers of the population. For example, the 
"Black Death" swept away two-thirds of the population 
in certain provinces of France in the years 1349-50; but 
this was "only the most terrible of many plagues which 
devastated Europe in the Middle Ages." 

(d) Social unrest. Growing out of the uncertainties of 
common life, the hungers and famines, the pestilence and 
contagions, and the endless economic miseries, the Middle 
Ages experienced many actual or threatened "revolts" of 
the peasantry. As early as during the reign of Diocletian 
(284-305 A.D.) these revolts were known, and all through 
the Middle Ages they continued at intervals. The most 
famous and most effective, coming as they did in the very 
dawn of the modern period, were the rising of the "Jac- 
querie" in France (1358) and the "Peasants' Revolt" 
under John Ball and Wat Tyler in England (1381). 

(e) Lesser and greater warfares. The feudal system 
was ostensibly a system established in the interest of peace 

1 Robinson, "Readings in European History," Vol. I ; Ch. VIII. 



148 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

and social order, but both within and without it tended to 
the promotion of disorder. The overlord must fight con- 
tinuously to keep the upper hand of his vassals within the 
system, and continuous fighting went on between the vari- 
ous overlords and between the various racial and national 
groups. Efforts were made to secure peace by such means 
as the ''Truce of God." 

(f) Fears of the supernatural. Credulity was the 
chief characteristic of the mental life of the period, and 
constantly renewed prophecies of the imminent "end of 
the world" stirred, thrilled, and in a sense paralyzed the 
activities of the successive generations; but they seemed to 
leave each new generation as credulous as its predecessor. 
In some real measure these supernatural fears led to the 
enthusiasms that attended the Crusades, and the endless 
promises of absolution and the like played into and fed 
these credulous enthusiasms. 

(g) Intellectual uncertainties. Though in the earlier 
centuries of the Middle Ages credulity, and therefore in- 
tellectual certainty, was the characteristic, in the later cen- 
turies came a gradual disillusionment, especially among 
the Teutonic peoples of the North. This was the promise 
of the eventual development of science. Little by little 
this intellectual uncertainty gnawed at the foundation of 
the Medieval system until it broke through. But for cen- 
turies this intellectual uncertainty was the possession of a 
very few. 

The Certainties and Securities of the Period. — In 
the struggles which the old social order of the South waged 
against these desperate uncertainties of the Middle Ages, 
real principles were at stake — social order, established and 
secure, versus anarchy, savagery, "the return into the 
brute." There could have been no continuous fight 
against such overwhelming odds had not the old civilization 



THE STRUCTURE OF MEDIEVALISM 149 

of the South been sustained by fundamental ''certainties" 
and securities. What were some of these ? 

(a) The church and the religious organization. Here 
was a practical retreat from the turbulence of the times. 
The churches, monasteries, convents, and hermitages pre- 
served old learnings, kept alive the love of knowledge, 
nurtured human hopes in quiet, improved modes of indus- 
try, arbitrated quarrels, and conserved the promise of a 
nobler age to be. 

(b) The hope of eternal security. The church could 
offer one other motive for standing by the older order: it 
held the keys to the gates of eternity, that real world 
(Plato's heaven, now Christianized into Augustine's ''City 
of God") which was to be the "happy home" of all the 
faithful, the "fatherland" of the soul. This belief found 
expression in many hymns, e.g., "Jerusalem my Happy 
Home." 

(c) The feudal system. For a time this system seemed 
to promise complete security and order, and its develop- 
ment in England did secure probably as great degree of 
order as the diverse conditions of the age could afford. 
But on the whole, as we have seen, the feudal system was 
but a temporary expedient, productive of mighty evils 
with which modern social hopes have had to wage continu- 
ous warfare. 

(d) The survivals of Roman law. Deeper than the ex- 
pedients of the feudal system, though not fully realized or 
understood, lay the fundamentals of social order in the 
conceptions of Roman law. This was now, of course, an 
absolute system of law, not generally operative, but codi- 
fied and complete; but a complete system was what the 
Middle Ages wanted. 

(e) A great literature. The central element here was 
the Bible, But certain other materials were orthodox, 



150 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

especially the writings of the "fathers," and these helped 
to sustain the courage of the age, though of course very- 
little of this was in the possession of the common people. 

(f) The conception of authority. The whole trend of 
history to the height of the IMiddle Ages emphasized the 
doctrine of one "lasting, universal, supreme authority to 
which the civilized world owed obedience." 

The Growth of the Medieval System. — Medievalism is 
the culmination of many lines of development and their 
convergence into a superficially consistent social and in- 
tellectual whole. In the midst of the terrific uncertainties 
of the whole period the longing for order became the most 
persistent human motive. Augustine had set forth the 
ideal in his impressive descriptions of the ' ' City of God. ' ' 
The gradual developments of centralized authority and 
control, the building of permanent cities as centers of 
civilization, the adjustment of social conditions so that 
fixed status became more universal, the subordination of all 
critical intelligence to the eternal realities of the faith — 
all these details, and many more, show the universal long- 
ings for order. It was indeed an age of endless contrasts 
in every aspect of existence. But the souls of the noblest 
spirits longed and worked for order, a permanent and final 
order. This is what Greek intellect had tried to create; 
it was what Roman law had stood for; it was the deep ex- 
pectation of Hebrew piety. And now, throughout this 
period, all logical powers, all pious hopes, and all practical 
administrative activities were turned in this same direc- 
tion. 

But the Platonic conception of the world failed to com- 
plete what it had begun. Rather, that diluted doctrine 
known as Neoplatonism, which had largely taken the place 
of the original, failed to carry out the promise ; or, it may 
be, there was too much of Socrates in Plato. At any rate, 



THE STRUCTURE OF MEDIEVALISM 151 

the unrest of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with their 
Crusades, their contacts with many ancient peoples and 
types of civilization, especially that of the Arabs, with the 
growth of national aims and the development of commer- 
cial activities — these tendencies proved too much for the 
strength of the Platonic doctrine, and civilization was near 
to disintegration. But a new tool was at hand. Aris- 
totle, lost for more than a thousand years, Aristotle "the 
conservative and the definer of what is," came to the res- 
cue of the distracted social world. Brought back to the 
West by the Saracens, Aristotle first frightened the leaders 
of the church; he seemed all that a philosopher of Chris- 
tendom should not be. But when it became apparent, 
through further study of his words, that Aristotle had no 
prejudices for or against any particular doctrine or creed, 
that he was primarily a logic, a way of looking at the world, 
the church turned to him with gratitude. Aristotle became 
the absolute intellectual dictator of the culminating period 
of the Middle Ages. He set the bounds to human think- 
ing. Hitherto there had been no recognized authority in 
the intellectual world. Plato was never an authority, but 
only a dominating influence. Hence, up to this time mental 
life had had some free play. "By establishing now the 
supreme authority of Aristotle in every sphere to which 
reasoning applies — the natural world as well as the meta- 
physical — and by interpreting Aristotle in her own way, a 
tool was at hand for holding reason in check, without at the 
same time denying it its rights, Aristotle was himseli 
identical with reason, not to be denied or questioned. 
Even in science, the question was, not what does nature re- 
veal, but what does Aristotle say ; and when science began 
to emerge, the authority of the philosopher was actively 
used to check its growth." ^ 

iKogers: "A Student's History of Philosophy," p. 215. 



152 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Educational Developments of the Middle Ages. — No 

fundamental scientific progress was made in a thousand 
years of such life; but educational developments of pro- 
found significance for all subsequent ages occurred. 
These, too, we must note in outline in order to properly 
appreciate their scope. 

(a) Various "revivals of learning." Though learning 
languished, it never really perished. Revivals took place 
under Julian (361-363), under Charlemagne (771-814),. 
and in the thirteenth century as a part of the culmination 
of the developing folkways of the Middle Ages. 

(b) Monastic influences in education. But the real 
preservation of the learning of the world was due to the 
influences of the monastic life. This was a universal char- 
acteristic of the whole period from the fourth to the thir- 
teenth century and later. Monasteries, with all their in- 
fluences and accessories, good, bad, and neutral, were 
found from the north of Scotland to the far Orient ; teach- 
ers and clergy and "brothers" were found in desert and 
forest and city street; and almost all sorts of doctrines, 
not utterly unorthodox, came from the monasteries. The 
social and educational ideal of the monasteries was an 
ascetic discipline — fasting, scourging the flesh, reducing 
the bodily wants to a minimum, destroying the natural 
appetites, the discipline of the "carnal man" for the sake 
of growth in moral and spiritual power. The vows of the 
monastic were chastity, poverty, and obedience, thus deny- 
ing the significance of the family, industry, and political 
institutions. Monastic life was completely dominated by 
the "rules of St. Benedict." Work and study made up 
the day's routine. Study became centralized in the 
monasteries. They became the schools, the teacher-train- 
ing institutions, the universities. Books were copied here 
and libraries were slowly built up. They were the re- 



THE STRUCTURE OF MEDIEVALISM 153 

treats of the scholars and the centers of practically all edu- 
cational effort. 

(c) The "Seven Liberal Arts." The learning of the 
past came to the Middle Ages in an organized form, worked 
over by the scholars of the very late classical period and 
called "The Seven Liberal Arts." These "arts" included 
the old trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and the 
quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). 
Of course these terms included a wider content than they 
do at present.^ 

(d) Scholasticism. The methods and forms of civiliza- 
tion in these ages came, as we have seen, from the old in- 
tellectual and institutional life of the Greeks and Romans; 
but the materials of the new social development were found 
in the tremendous diversities of the races and peoples of 
the age. The task of organizing all these strange, new 
materials into the old forms, of cramming the old catego- 
ries with these new contents, of filling the "old bottles" 
with this "new wine," was no easy task; and it called for 
the development of the highest powers of subtle dialectic. 
"Scholasticism" is the outcome. In ordinary school his- 
tories scholastic dialectic is usually ridiculed, being por- 
trayed as concerned with such amusing subjects as "How 
many angels can stand on the point of a needle?" But 
in reality the scholastic development is the actual organi- 
zation of all the intellectual forces of the old order in 
preparation for the life and death struggle with the new 
order that is to come : and there is nothing amusing about 
getting ready for a life and death struggle, though there 
is something very exhilarating about it. 

(e) The universities. Scholastic discussions centered 
gradually at certain rather strategic places. Bologna in 
the south, under the leadership of Irnerius, became the most 

1 See Abelson : "The Seven Liberal Arts." 



154 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

famous center of legal learning (about 1100-1130). Paris, 
under the inspiration of the rather unorthodox teachings of 
Abelard, became the chief center of theological learning 
and discussion (about the middle of the twelfth century) ; 
and before the end of the thirteenth century Europe had 
fourteen universities. The universities soon became the 
possessors of a monopoly of the teaching function ; and the 
question may well be raised whether their chief function 
was the development of knowledge, or the control of knowl- 
edge in the interest of existing conditions. The fact that 
the universities developed at those places and under those 
conditions where great social conflicts were impending 
seems to indicate that their major function was the control 
of learning in the interest of established conditions. 

(f) Chivalry. Warfare tore young men from their life 
in settled society and sent them out to the freedom of the 
battle and the march. Especially did the Crusades tend 
to liberate young men from all the constraints that the 
established social system of Europe had so carefully devel- 
oped. Young soldiers, returning from contacts with the 
institutions of other lands and with years of freedom from 
conventional restraints, could prove and did prove to be 
very real dangers to the established social order. Hence 
society must educate its future soldiers to implicit belief 
in the established social order and an acceptance of that 
social order as the final organization of civilization before 
they set out on their travels. The educational system of 
"chivalry" accomplished this. Young men destined to be 
knights were completely habituated to the existent order, 
and they swore by holy vows to help maintain the system, 
despite all disillusioning experiences elsewhere. 

Thus we can see that through all the obvious educational 
institutions and influences of the age men were being 
habituated to the accepted social order. Education was the 



THE STRUCTURE OF MEDIEVALISM 155 

accomplished "handmaiden" of civilization and men were 
trained to "fit into the system." Through industry, civic 
life, religious institution, and educational effort there ran 
one single motive: the salvation of civilization is in the 
conformity of the individual; hence all educational aims 
center in the processes that produce conformity. 

The Culmination of the Middle Ages. — But there is an- 
other aspect of the matter that needs to be noted. Not 
merely is the salvation of civilization secured by the con- 
formity of the individual, but it is in this way alone that 
the individual comes to have any real being. The indi- 
vidual has no value or significance in himself. Here, just 
as in the primitive folkways, he gets his value and signifi- 
cance from his membership in the organized community. 
He gets his citizenship from the state, his morality from 
the social tradition, his religion from the church, and his 
intelligence from the school. By himself he is nothingness. 
"Filthy rags," fit only to be thrown upon the refuse heap: 
this is the orthodox doctrine. 

This absolute system of the Middle Ages, which reaches 
its culmination in the great politico-religious organization 
of the thirteenth century, which finds its most complete 
statement in the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas ^ 

1 The work of Thomas, the "Angelical Doctor," illustrates as noth- 
ing else can the sublime heights of faith which the age reached. 
Catholic scholars look up to him as the final authority in all matters 
of medieval thought. Prof. Walsh, in his "Greatest of the Cen- 
turies" (Page 281), quotes Father Vaughn as follows: "The 'Summa 
Theologica' is a mighty synthesis, thrown into technical and scien- 
tific form, of the Catholic traditions of East and West, of the in- 
fallible dicta of the Sacred Page, and of the most enlightened con- 
clusions of human reason, gathered from the soaring intuitions of 
the Academy (Platonic) and the rigid severity of the Lyceum (Aris- 
totelian). Its author was a man endowed with the characteristic 
notes of the three great Fathers of Greek Philosophy: he possessed 
the intellectual honesty and precision of Socrates, the analytic keen- 
ness of Aristotle, and that yearning after wisdom and light which 



156 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

(1227-1274), its graphic presentation in the vision of 
Dante, and which is an all-inclusive world based on the 
principles of Aristotle, is really deeply rooted in one aspect 
of the moral and spiritual needs of humanity. In an age 
of endless uncertainties man must find some security upon 
which he can rest habitually, even thoughtlessly, while he 
is grappling with the immediate practical problems about 
him. This Medieval statement of life is so realistic (Aris- 
totle is the philosopher of the existent) that it is securely 
fortified against the assaults of either brute force (for 
men will gladly die for it) or petty criticism. For human- 
ity must catch sight of something essentially larger, nobler, 
more worth while, before this conception can be abandoned, 
and petty criticism can never bring that finer world. No, 
this conception of life as a great, absolute system of think- 
ing, feeling, and acting cannot be ignored or lightly swept 
aside. It is, of course, of the nature of the primitive folk- 
ways; it is built of habit, custom, tradition, and institu- 
tion, all bound together by the explicit logic of Aristotle, 
which is the implicit logic of the folkways. It persists in 

was the distinguishing mark of 'Plato the divine,' and which has been 
one of the essential conditions of the highest intuition of religion." 
To this surpassing greatness of faith of the thirteenth century 
many scholars of all faiths have offered testimony. Mr. Henry Osborn 
Taylor, in his "Medieval Mind," (Vol. 1, p. 13) says: "The peoples 
of western Europe, from the eighth to the thirteenth century, passed 
through a homogeneous growth, and evolved a spirit different from 
that of any other period of history — a spirit which stood in awe be- 
fore its monitors human and divine, and deemed that knowledge was 
to be drawn from the storehouse of the past ; which seemed to rely on 
everything except its sin-crushed self, and trusted everything except 
its senses; which in the actual looked for the ideal, in the concrete 
saw the symbol, in the earthly Church beheld the heavenly, and in 
fleshly joys discerned the devil's lures; which lived in the unrecon- 
ciled opposition between the lust and vain-glory of earth and the 
attainment of salvation; which felt life's terror and its pitifulness, 
and its eternal hope; around which waved concrete infinitudes, and 
over which flamed the terror of darkness and the Judgment Day." 



THE STRUCTURE OF MEDIEVALISM 157 

ceremonials, rituals, beliefs, creeds, doctrines, and scrip- 
tures which soothe and satisfy the soul ; it offers a compre- 
hensive life to humanity; it answers all questions that may 
be rightly asked; it promises all that the universe has to 
give as reward for faithfulness and obedience ; and, when 
the intellectual implications of the system have been fully 
considered, we are convinced that here is a philosophy of 
life and existence from which only the most daring and 
brilliant, or the most reckless and foolhardy, can ever hope 
to escape. History has many truthful and fateful stories 
to tell of the inevitable outcome of all efforts to escape. 
Any who would attack the permanence or validity of this 
medieval interpretation of life must come prepared to ex- 
hibit that eternal vigilance which is supposed to be the price 
of all liberties. 

It is this mighty structure of ordered and completed 
civilization which stands as the background of all modern 
movements. The whole of the "modern world" struggle 
is an effort to escape from the iron implications of this 
medieval system into greater freedom along all those lines 
that seem to be humanly valuable and worthy of effort. 
From these accomplished heights of social, religious, politi- 
cal, and intellectual organization we must now turn to a 
survey of the processes by which humanity has contrived 
to escape, in some small measure, into another sort of 
world. 



PART IV 
THE GROWTH OF THE MODERN WORLD 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE ROOTS OF THE MODERN UNDERNEATH THE MEDIEVAL 

Medievalism not the Final Statement of Life. — The 

mighty structure of medievalism seems almost the final de- 
nial of those old impulses toward freedom, individuality, 
and progressive growth which we have seen in such indi- 
viduals as Socrates, such internal protests as primitive 
Christianity, such racial irruptions as the Teutonic inva- 
sions. But not so. Under all the political and social mag- 
nificence, the religious authority, and the intellectual sub- 
tlety of medievalism there were deep-lying energies which 
maintained their continuity of life with the original im- 
pulses of the race; and these were yet to be heard from. 
In the working out of that medieval world-inclusive struc- 
ture (as its builders supposed it to be), many elements were 
overlooked, ignored as useless, despised as harmless, or 
veneered over and considered safely out of the way. But 
those vital elements but wait their time. Medievalism is 
not the final statement of the significance of human life. 
We must now attend while life, the tireless worker, now 
with the aid of intelligence attempts to rebuild the struc- 
ture bit by bit, and now with the aid of passion and revo- 
lution tears down a majestic wing in one wild orgy of re- 
bellious energy, leaving to the long future the task of pro- 
viding the new structure more nearly fitted to the needs of 
men. Goethe says somewhere, "Law is mighty, but might- 
ier is need," and that tells the story of the revolt from the 
majestic finality of medievalism. Human need cannot be 
answered forever under any perfected and growthless sys- 

161 



162 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

tern. With the risk of losing all, humanity still dares soon 
or late to try the unknown ways, to make the great adven- 
ture ! 

The Roots of the Modern World. — What were the ener- 
gies that remained from all the protests of the past, dor- 
mant through all these centuries, waiting their time? 
Medievalism is, in its very perfection, struck with inner 
decay; living energies, promises of a new world, shoot up 
through the ruins of the old. What are these new-old 
forces of life ? 

The significance of the individual, basic factor in the 
doctrine of Socrates, boldly recognized in primitive Chris- 
tianity, fundamental in the democracy of the Teutons, is 
never completely covered up. It appears as a sort of in- 
consistent element in the Neoplatonic philosophy, is con- 
served in the thought and practices of the mystics of the 
Middle Ages, and crops out here and there in the specula- 
tions of the nonconformist philosophers. As we come to 
the end of the medieval period individuals begin to appear, 
to stand out; and the period of transition brings us many 
such — men who dare to stand for the new impulses, ex- 
ploration, invention, innovation, science, an intelligent out- 
look upon life and the world. Even Platonism itself fails 
the builders of the larger folkways, just because Plato 
could not quite deny the place of the individual in the 
social world. 

The significance of primitive Christianity seemed all but 
completely covered up, both in practice and in specula- 
tion; but the energies of revolt inherent in that earliest 
expression of Christianity were not lost. Primitive sects 
were in existence all through the period ; heretics constantly 
called in question the validity of accepted dogmas; the 
speculative mystics, like Scotus Erigena, even restate that 
old revolutionary proposition of the founder of Christian- 



THE ROOTS OF MODERN LIFE 163 

ity that growth, not finished system, is the nature of the 
world. Reformers appear long before the Reformation, 
e.g., Wycliffe in England and Huss in Bohemia; even St. 
Augustine, in many ways the official philosopher of the 
early Middle Ages, is divided in his allegiance to the fin- 
ished and absolute universe, so much so, indeed, that he 
becomes the philosophical mainstay of the Reformation. 
Indeed, running all through the Middle Ages something of 
the spirit of revolt is to be found. Even as members of a 
perfect system which offers them all things for their faith- 
ful obedience, men grow tired of endless passivity and re- 
ceptivity, of intelligenceless acquiescence in tradition and 
perfection. Primitive energies and impulses cannot be for- 
ever ignored or denied. 

The primitive racial characteristics of the "new and 
exuberant" peoples, though veneered over with studied 
culture and "moralit}^" cannot be destroyed. Deep under 
the soil they remain largely unaffected, unchanged, ready 
to germinate into diverse nationalities at the earliest pos- 
sible moment. And, indeed, racial instincts could not 
vanish in an age when new racial conflicts were constantly 
occurring. We have already seen how the age was one of 
constant invasions and incursions. These crises kept alive 
the deeper racial antagonisms, despite the theoretical 
"unity of Christendom," and helped to lay the foundations 
for the great intellectual awakening of later centuries. 

Characteristic Expression of these Energies in the 
Middle Ages. — The common life of the people, despite the 
feudal control, showed certain aspects of freedom. The 
towns were refuges of escaped serfs, working-places of the 
freed populations, the homes of the growing "Third Es- 
tate" whose development was eventually to mark the over- 
throw of the power of the clergy and the nobility. In 
many towns and cities democratic tendencies were striving 



164 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

within the people; free towns, self-governing communes, 
were developing. Here, too, corporate guilds of the work- 
ers grew and flourished, with their tremendous significance 
for free workmanship and free intelligence. Occasionally 
the miseries of the poor touched the heart of an ecclesiastic, 
and he dared to voice his indignation. And more than one 
heretic poet dared to denounce the selfishness of the clergy 
who fawned upon the rich and forgot the poor.^ 

The centuries of the Middle Ages constituted a long 
period of discipline in work and in subordination, but also 
in training for freedom under the larger and finer civiliza- 
tion of the future. Obedience does not always assure com- 
plete and final subordination; it may prepare for the per- 
sonal self-control of a larger democratic social order. 

Alongside this life of the common people we must note 
what has been called the "medieval dilemma," which 
played an insidious part in the disillusionment of the peo- 
ple and in the eventual releasing of energies for the mod- 
ern struggle. This "dilemma" arose out of the fact that 
while this earthly life must go on individually and in the 
race, being pushed on by impulses and energies deeper 
than thought, yet the medieval ideal was an expression of 
the worthlessness of this life itself. "One must live and 
work; but the only real value in life is getting out of life 
into the heavenly existence." Such a plain contradiction 
of values must, and does, sooner or later become conscious ; 
its final result is disillusionment. 

Another expression of these energies of progress is seen 
in the life on the frontiers of Europe. All through the 
Middle Ages there were men who, like Arthur, 

moving everywhere, 
Cleared the dark places, and let in the law, 
And broke the bandit holds and cleansed the land. 

1 See Robinson's "Readings in European History," Vol. I; Ch. 
XVII. 



THE ROOTS OF MODERN LIFE 165 

But the law they let in was not always the law of the 
empire; more frequently it was the "law of necessity." 
For the great problem of the frontiers is (as we have seen 
in the whole history of America) : Shall civilization grow 
up everywhere in conformity with a scheme handed down 
from the past, from the old centers of settled life; must 
everything fit into the old patterns? Or shall men be free 
to use, under new conditions, the new energies released, the 
new patterns suggested by the new conditions, the new 
intelligence developed by the new situations? This ques- 
tion was obviously the most crucial of all those that arose. 
We shall have occasion to consider its implications more 
fully in a later section, and we may leave it here. 

A third expression of this energy of the times is seen in 
the mingling of the peoples of all known continents. The 
contacts of Europeans with other races, as well as among 
themselves, the very processes of making Europeans (for 
Asiatics and Africans were making themselves over into 
Europeans all through this period), the explorations of oc- 
casional restless individuals, the extension of commerce 
through the great East, and especially the expanding or 
horizon, interest, and knowledge through the experiences of 
the Crusades — all these items show how far from extinct 
were the primitive impulses of the race. 

"We may indicate by one illustration the profound influ- 
ence of these contacts and minglings of the peoples, though 
the illustration presents, perhaps, the most noteworthy 
case. In 732 a.d. the advance of the Saracens into Central 
Europe by way of Spain was stopped at Tours, in Gaul. 
Turned back upon themselves, these cultured Mohamme- 
dans settled down to the occupancy of Spain, making Cor- 
dova one of the four great centers of the Moslem Empire, 
the other three being Damascus in Syria, Bagdad on the 
Tigris River, and Cairo on the Nile. Here, in an empire 



166 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

stretching "from the river Indus to the Pillars of Her- 
cules, the same religion was professed, the same tongue 
spoken, the same laws obeyed. ' ' It may be remarked with- 
out serious exaggeration that this empire was the home of 
the finest civilization of the age. At any rate, it has been 
said that "from the eighth to the twelfth century the an- 
cient world knew but two civilizations, — that of Byzantium 
and that of the Arabs ' ' ; and of these the Arab civilization 
was much more energetic, much more intelligent. Passing 
by the advances which they made in agriculture, manufac- 
turing, and commerce, we may note that they built a uni- 
versity in Cairo which at one time had twelve thousand 
students, and that their great library in Spain is said to 
have contained four hundred thousand manuscript vol- 
umes in the tenth century. They gave the world its first 
impulse toward mathematics since the Alexandrian Age, 
practically inventing algebra, improving trigonometry, and 
introducing the Arabic system of notation to take the place 
of the old and clumsy Roman system. In many other lines 
they were prepared to teach the Christian civilization north 
of the Pyrenees. But our special interest at this time arises 
from the fact that they gave back to Europe the philosophy 
of Aristotle, lost for a thousand years but treasured by 
these Oriental scholars and now thrown by them into the 
current of discussion out of which was to come the intel- 
lectual life of Western Europe. It is true that the actual 
result of this return of Aristotle was reactionary ; he helped 
to give the finishing touches of perfection and completeness 
to the structure of medievalism. But the coming of the 
Mohammedans is an excellent illustration of that "cross- 
fertilization of cultures" by which the world is saved from 
its provincialisms, from its tendencies toward the levels of 
stagnate custom. 

Summary. — So through all these experiences, through 



THE ROOTS OF MODERN LIFE 167 

the resurgence of those primitive energies and impulses 
which dared to battle at length with the perfect system of 
medievalism, through the growth of knowledge of other 
peoples and lands, through the development of a middle 
class or Third Estate in the cities, with special privileges 
and with a growing sense of independence, through the 
life on the frontiers where strong men were fighting great 
battles with strong forces, making such adjustments of con- 
ditions as were possible under the circumstances — through 
centuries of these experiences there came about a gradual 
disillusionment of the barbarians of the North as to the 
superiority of the civilization of the South; there came a 
gradual suspicion of the ultimate reality of a scheme of 
life which, for the great masses of the people, subordinated 
all the concerns of this world to the hope of another ; there 
came the freeing of energies with which to do the work of 
the great unknown future. 

Before turning to that larger work, however, we must 
pause a moment to consider some of the foreshadowings of 
that coming modern world in the long experience of the 
Middle Ages. The modern world has come to its ideals and 
its tasks through revolutions ; but the roots of even a revo- 
lutionary age may be found in the soils of antecedent cen- 
turies, and the great revolution may be preceded by lesser 
expressions of the same creative spirit. 



CHAPTER XIX 

SOME PORESHADOWINGS OF THE MODERN WORLD IN THE 
MEDIEVAL 

We have noted that from one point of view the problem 
of the Middle Ages was the conflict between order and 
disorder, between established results of civilization and the 
anarchy of constant invasion and migration (Chapter 
XVII). But from another, and perhaps more valid point 
of view, we have now to see that the problem of that period 
was the conflict between the fundamental social forces that 
tend toward progress and the forces that make for fixed 
systems and social stagnation. We have briefly followed 
the gradual development of the mighty structure of social 
order from the days when Plato interpreted Greek social 
disintegration in such ways as to make it still help toward 
a higher and more absolute social system; we have seen it 
culminate under the logic of Aristotle and the intellectual 
leadership of Thomas Aquinas in that majestic and all-in- 
clusive statement of the significance of human life which is 
generally called "medievalism," one of the two funda- 
mental interpretations of life that the world has worked out 
to date. We have seen, also, that underneath the surface 
of the medieval system the "roots of progress" were still 
alive, promising eventual growth of a very different kind 
of world (Chapter XVIII). We must now note how, even 
in this very period and despite all the efforts of the "sys- 
tem," many evidences of life and many promises of the 
new order came to light. As was natural and inevitable, 
each of these evidences appears in the form of a struggle 

168 



FORESHADOWINGS OF MODERN PERIOD 169 

with existing conditions and institutions. We shall briefly 
note some of these "struggles." 

(a) The Rise of the Nations as against the Empire and 
the Church. — The efforts of the Middle Ages were directed 
to the development and complete organization of ' ' Christen- 
dom," a holy state which should include and control all 
the diverse nationalities of the world under one central 
authority. But the effort to smother the racial instincts 
of the many peoples who now occupy Europe proved futile ; 
the folkway traditions of these various races were too 
deeply rooted in their very personal and social natures to 
be thus easily covered over and destroyed. And, indeed, 
nothing could be imagined that would' have made the 
human race more uninteresting than the success of this 
plan of reducing all peoples to the same drab level of con- 
formity to a program conceived in Rome. Emotionally, 
intellectually, educationally, the loss would have been im- 
measurable. But it was a movement that could not suc- 
ceed. England gradually assumed her own career; and 
though her story is closely inwrought with the story of the 
continental states, yet after 449 Anglo-Saxon diversity 
made certain the development of an independent racial, 
social, and political order. 

The same may be said of France from and after the be- 
ginning of the work of the stronger Capetian kings, for 
example, Louis VI (1108-1137). In a sense it may even 
be said that the very events that brought about the break- 
ing-up of the empire of Charlemagne, — racial struggles 
between the Franks and the Germans, — promised an 
eventual nation of the Franks. The whole story of this 
development is, of course, too long to be told in this place. 
But this much must be recognized: Deep under the sur- 
face of the "conformities" of the Middle Ages, racial and 
national traits were preserved against the day when the 



170 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

conflict between these diverse traits and the centralizing 
tendencies might be waged on somewhat even terms. The 
rise of nations has meant ahnost endless warfares ; but it 
has preserved the great diversities of life from destruction 
and given us the picturesque social and political life of 
the present. And not even the horrors of war can make 
us forget these values. 

(b) The Struggles between the Cities and the Feudal 
Monarchies. — After the destruction of the Roman towns by 
the invading barbarians Europe knew little of the old 
town life until about the tenth century. Then, in the 
midst of the Hungarian invasions, Henry the First of 
Germany (919-936), known usually as "Henry the 
Fowler," gave great impetus to town building by setting 
up many fortified places in which, he decreed, one out of 
every nine peasants should dwell for the purpose of stor- 
ing up one-third of the annual harvest of the other eight. 
Henry became known to history as the "Builder of Cities," 
and town life became again a recognized type of living. 
Little by little the cities developed ; new types of industry 
grew. Cities became centers of intelligence, centers of 
aspiration, centers of organization in the long struggle for 
human freedom. They were given special charters by some 
of the national kings. They learned to play fast and loose 
with feudal and national monarchs in their determination 
to become free. They became centers of commerce, with 
all that that implies; and, of course, they became the 
refuges of all the oppressed, the homes of all workers who 
were not immediately attached to the soil. The struggles 
between the cities and the central authorities is one of the 
most definite of all the struggles of the period for freedom 
and human rights.^ 

In this connection we must note also the struggle be- 

1 Robinson : "Readings in European History," Vol. I, Ch XVIII. 



FORESHADOWINGS OF MODERN PERIOD 171 

tween the feudal organization of industry (mostly agri- 
cultural) and tlie rising industries of the towns, especially 
as represented by the merchant and craft gilds. The de- 
velopment of the varied industries represented by these 
gilds is one of the most important evidences of the non- 
conformist nature of much of the life of the Middle Ages. 

(c) The Struggles between Heretic Sects and the 
Church. — Here again we come upon a long story. We 
have seen how all the efforts of the established order were 
directed to the task of bringing primitive Christianity 
under control and harmonizing it with the institutional 
attitudes of the Roman Empire. The task seemed to have 
been rather successfully accomplished. But that was only 
on the surface. "Heretic" sects abounded all through the 
Middle Ages. "We cannot go into this in detail. We may 
merely call attention to the Waldensians and the Albigen- 
sians as representative heretical groups who steadfastly 
refused to submit to the demands of centralized religious 
authorities and who maintained their heretical integrity 
until the days of religious intolerance had passed away.^ 

(d) The Development of Mysticism. — As a religious ex- 
perience this tended to undermine the authority of the 
church. Mysticism was an individual experience. In 
the very nature of things it could not be standardized or 
controlled. It offered the means for bringing in all sorts 
of innovations. Yet it was so distinctively religious and 
real that it could not be absolutely denied as a normal 
phase of the Christian's life. 

(e) Gradual Rise of Vernacular Languages and the 
Growth of National Literatures. — Nothing more fully 
shows the developmental forces that were at work under 
all the unprogressive systems of the age than this. Lan- 
guage cannot be bound by any standards. Latin became 

1 Id. : Ch. XVII. 



172 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

corrupted, interwoven with many other tongues, differen- 
tiated. The Eomance and other tongues arose little by 
little, in mongrel dialects or in more pure fashion. Along 
with this growth of vernacular languages came the devel- 
opment of indigenous literatures, the work of singers, 
poets, balladists in many lands. A new life was in germi- 
nation under all the smooth structure of medievalism, a 
life that breathed free air, dared new, strange flights of 
fancy, and promised, in good time, to come forth into full 
expression. 

(f) The Struggle between the P]cclesiastical and Secular 
Ideals of Life, — The Crusades had been expected to bring 
about overwhelming enthusiasms for the church and her 
service. But they had turned out quite otherwise. The 
political results were negligible; the religious results were 
practically nothing; but the secular results were many. 
The life of Europe was shaken to its foundations. Dor- 
mant intellects were stirred by contacts with many peoples 
and strange customs, and provincialisms gave place to the 
beginnings of a type of cosmopolitanism. National rival- 
ries, rising out of the competition of national types, helped 
to speed on the development of separate nationalities. 
Commercial activities were immensely strengthened by the 
realization of the wealth of the East, and by the knowledge 
of new varieties of merchandise, especially certain lux- 
uries of Eastern growth or manufacture. The Crusades 
were great undertakings, requiring the transportation of 
large armies and the furnishing of immense supplies of 
foods. The sense of accomplishment was acquired in these 
undertakings, rather than the sense of dependence upon 
the church. So much so was this the case that that par- 
ticular form of education called ''Chivalry" was largely 
developed as a means of offsetting the disintegrating ef- 
fects of this period of the Crusades. Yet, upon the older 



FORESHADOWINGS OF MODERN PERIOD 173 

religious and political institutions, despite all efforts, a 
secular conception of life was coming into existence. 

(g) The Undercurrents of Philosophy. — Aside from the 
theological philosophizing of the Middle Ages, the thinkers 
of the age were largely divided into two great groups, with 
later a third, or mediating group. These two primary 
groups were the realists and the nominalists. The main 
problem in dispute was as to the reality of "general ideas." 
This question was inherited from Plato. At first sight its 
importance does not seem to be very great. But our real 
comprehension of the Middle Ages here gets its test. If we 
apprehend the significance of this conflict between these 
two "schools," we shall be able to feel that we have gained 
a real insight into the problems of the period ; if we do not 
understand this conflict, we have failed to grasp the sig- 
nificance of the age. The realists believed that general 
ideas were real ; the nominalists held that general ideas 
were merely names, convenient fictions, useful for purposes 
of discussion but having no objective reality. For exam- 
ple, in the sentence "The horse is a noble animal," horse 
does not refer to some particular animal, but to a class of 
animals. As such, the nominalists claimed that "horse" 
had no existence, that it was merely a word. The realists, 
on the other hand, claimed that such general ideas were 
the most real of all existences, more real than any par- 
ticular horse, which was, indeed, but an imperfect shadow 
of the eternal reality, the idea "horse." As stated above, 
this seems like a very unimportant distinction ; and it may 
seem ridiculous that just this conflict marks the intel- 
lectual crisis of the Middle Ages, while its practical decision 
carries tremendous significance for the whole future devel- 
opment of society. Yet this is the case, and its understand- 
ing is most important. Let us see ! 

From the centers of authority, like Rome, traditional 



174 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

leaders were attempting to dictate the whole course of civ- 
ilization, keeping it within proper bounds of traditional- 
ism, imposing upon it the established forms of the past, 
gradually hemming it in and bounding it with orthodox 
programs or approved ideas. Whence came these ideas? 
They were revealed to prophets and teachers and leaders 
of old, so it was claimed. These are the eternal ideas, the 
final forms of social order. These are the realities of the 
world; and when the world shall have been completely 
organized into these ideal forms, we shall at last have 
reached the real world, the world of Plato's ideas. 

Out on the frontiers, both geographical and intellectual, 
on the other hand, men were extending the boundaries of 
civilization, cutting down the wilderness, letting in the 
light, setting up such homes and neighborhoods as were 
possible under the conditions and asking only that they be 
permitted to go ahead in the great task of transforming 
the wilderness into farms and cities. Here, under such 
conditions, these old traditions hampered the work of mak- 
ing a world; these "eternal ideas" stood in the way of 
doing the tasks; a "preexistent" social order made actual 
social orders impossible. This being the case, the man on 
the frontiers had to be a ''nominalist." He held that such 
general ideas as "the church" or "the empire" were mere 
names, having no reality that he need be concerned about; 
he held his task to be that of cutting down the wilderness, 
and if any "general idea" should interfere with the ac- 
complishment of that task, then so much the worse for the 
idea! 

Now from the standpoint of the central authorities such 
acts and such doctrines were dangerous ; they threatened 
the authority of the institutions which existed under those 
general ideas. More than that, if the progressive activities 
of the frontiersman and the nominalistic doctrine of the 



FORESHADOWINGS OF MODERN PERIOD 175 

unorthodox philosopher should prevail, the whole structure 
of medieval thought and the whole social order would be in 
danger of passing away. So we can see that this conflict 
between realism and nominalism was profoundly important. 
It was really a discussion of this great social question: 
"May social order be allowed to go ahead with its pressing 
tasks out on the frontiers under such guidance as its own 
intelligence can develop there, under the conditions that 
exist ; or must all social development be determined in ac- 
cordance with preexistent programs, be organized from 
some authoritative center, be controlled by traditional con- 
ceptions and imposed -upon local conditions by arbitrary 
authority, whether they fit or not?" The nominalist in- 
sisted on the former program, the realist on the latter. It 
was a struggle between two great social programs, rather 
than a mere philosophizing. And in the long run the de- 
cision was rendered by events, rather than by any intel- 
lectual tribunal. The work of civilization on the frontiers 
went on despite all disputes. The Platonic influence failed, 
and the extreme form of realism lost its grip. The Sara- 
cens brought new forms of learning into Europe; among 
these new forms was mathematics, a new tool for breaking 
down old prejudices. The Crusades developed great mili- 
tary enterprises; the undertaking of engineering projects, 
such as the building of castles, became common. "Impos- 
sible" things were being done. Intellectual activities were 
"in the air." Aristotle had come to light, too; and while 
his first influence must be counted in favor of the great 
structure of medievalism, yet his final influence counted the 
other way, since, as the "philosopher of the existent," he 
had to recognize that what was going on on the frontiers 
was real and must be accepted as such. Thus the intel- 
lectual foundations of medievalism crumbled. 

In place of both the realism of the traditional author!- 



176 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ties and the nominalism of the frontiers, there arose, how- 
ever, a new theory based largely on Aristotle and called 
conceptualism. According to this theory, general ideas are 
not objectively real, but they are much more than mere 
names ; they are ways of thinking similarities, and thus for 
purposes of organizing thought they are thoroughly valid, 
but not for purposes of coercion. This allowed larger 
measures of freedom for social action, while keeping some 
place for the knowledge of the past. But it forecast the 
end of medievalism as an absolute system and at the same 
time, by criticising the more extreme demands of nominal- 
ism, which asked for the complete freedom of the ''fron- 
tier" from all old controls, it showed that no age can be- 
come complete by cutting itself off entirely from the past, 
that each age needs the discipline of its impulses that comes 
from contacts and conflicts with the accomplishments of the 
past. 

Other Important Developments. — The invention of 
printing, dating in the form of "block books" from the 
fourteenth century and in the form of movable types from 
the fifteenth, gave tremendous impetus to the spread of 
knowledge and afforded the greatest aid in the intellectual 
awakening which was so soon to take place. 

The introduction of gunpowder illustrates in an interest- 
ing way the attitude of the modern period as opposed to the 
medieval attitude. The problem of security and quiet in 
the days of petty feudal warfare had brought about the 
building of great castles, often utterly impregnable to the 
weapons and offensive measures of the times. Castle-build- 
ing was thus the answer of medievalism to that particular 
phase of the disorder of the age; it was an absolute and 
final answer, as befitted the age. But gunpowder made 
the castle impossible as a place of residence ; it blew down 
the walls^ wrecked the foundations, and set up once more 



FORESHADOWINGS OF MODERN PERIOD 177 

the old problem of finding security. The Middle Ages 
looked for absolute answers in which the intelligence could 
rest; the modern world looks for problems which can wor- 
thily engage the intelligence. 

It were a long task to relate the whole story of these im- 
plicit tendencies of the Middle Ages and their explicit for- 
mulations and expressions. Perhaps enough has been set 
forth to show that all through the period internal fires of 
life and light existed, largely unsuspected, but always un- 
quenchable. At any rate, we have seen how commerce, in- 
dustry, and even war (the occupations of Plato's two 
lower classes) became the training-fields of the very im- 
pulses that medievalism attempted to deny and defeat in 
its absolute system. To be sure, as we have seen in a for- 
mer chapter, medievalism recognized the common base im- 
pulses of life, but only to the extent of offering expiation 
for them. It is of the very irony of fate, therefore, that 
these despised impulses should find such constant exercise 
in the vocations of the serf, the vassal, the merchant, and 
the soldier, thus gradually training and disciplining a 
mighty strength for future expression and control. 

We have seen, too, how these activities found expression 
in distinctive literatures, — ballads and songs of the trou- 
badours, etc. A new life was surging up through individ- 
uals and they could not be silent. They were accomplish- 
ing work despite obstacles. Their sense of accomplishment 
was largely nurtured by the functioning of the very im- 
pulses which the great systems had put under the ban, and 
this feeling of work done, of enterprises accomplished, gave 
the nominalists actual grounds in their own experiences 
for fighting the tyranny of institutions and the demands of 
the realists. 

For the age had many "'frontiers." War, commerce, 
and the industry by which men live, as well as the wilder- 



178 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

nesses of the North and West, were "frontiers." Men 
were schooled in actual tasks ; they lived actual experiences ; 
they braved actual conditions; they laid those "spectres of 
the mind" — the ideas of the realists — and won out. They 
made this world signify something worth while and laid 
the foundations for the Renaissance, an age that should 
move over completely to the field of the impulses, interests, 
and experiences of this world. 

We must now note how these deep impulse-fires break 
forth into the first great burning and glowing of the mod- 
ern world. For the conflict between the established order 
and these deep-lying forces of progress must now become 
open, definite, and inextinguishable. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE FIRST FULL OUTBURST OF THE MODERN WORLD SPIRIT 

The Middle Ages as a Germination Period. — In the 

structure of medievalism man, the individual, counted for 
nothing, as we have seen. Whatever v^^orth he possessed 
at any time came to him, because of his membership in a 
great system, social, political, religious, and educational. 
That was the theory. But the facts were different, at least 
in some respects, for there were men all through this period 
who dared to question this fundamental theory, who dared 
to assert the superiority of the individual to the institutions 
within which he lived. We come now to a time when such 
assertions become the characteristic of the age. 

But what shall save this new age of criticism and dis- 
illusionment from the sophisms of that period of the break- 
down of the folkways in Athens? This shall save it; that 
for a thousand years men have been disciplined and buf- 
feted and "battered with the shocks of doom to shape and 
use." Energies have been slowly gathering, impulses 
slowly ripening, purposes gradually maturing. The very 
handing over of the common life to the discipline of work 
prepared the way. The outcome can be foreseen somewhat ; 
history has taught some lessons. The Renaissance is not 
an accident. It is the flowering of the human spirit after 
long germination and growth in the soil of fundamental 
experience; it is proof that humanity possesses something 
more fundamental than the power of thinking, viz., the im- 
pulses of life and growth; it is the expression of the hy- 
pothesis that man, growing by institutions, must yet out- 

179 



180 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

grow soon or late the institutions of his own construction; 
it is demonstration of the proposition that humanity grows 
weary of the perfect and turns gladly to the imperfect, the 
incomplete, wherein room for larger life and fuller growth 
can be found. 

The Character of the Renaissance. — The Middle Ages, 
despairing of this world as essentiall}' evil, had undertaken 
to construct another world beside this one, as we may say, 
wherein certain ideal forces were to be found and certain 
desirable characteristics were to be cultivated. Men were 
to give up their energies, their initiatives, their originali- 
ties, their own wills, their personal desires, and in exchange 
they were to receive infinite rewards, eternal recompenses in 
some other, later, unworldly world. But the Renaissance 
turned boldly away from this conception. Men must give 
over this waiting until a future condition for their chance 
to live; they must strike out into the midst of life here 
and now. "The development and unlimited increase" of 
the present life became the goal. Revolt from the dreari- 
ness of scholasticism; denial of the ideal of asceticism; a 
new enthusiasm, unknown since the Greeks, for beauty and 
nature; the opening out of a larger universe, of vaster 
majesties and expansive spaces, yet capable of becoming re- 
lated to man as his personal home; man as the master of 
his own existence, not the pawn of a great System-maker; 
the awakening of dormant and latent energies; the libera- 
tion of forces chained for a thousand years; a great, rest- 
less, tumultuous, forward movement which liberates new 
aspects of the human spirit and develops new strengths as it 
moves — all this was the Renaissance ! 

The Renaissance in Italy. — For many reasons Italy be- 
came the birthplace of this modern spirit. The cities of 
the North of Italy, of a population mingled of blood from 
both Latin and Teutonic civilizations, had long been cen- 



THE RENAISSANCE 181 

ters of political and intellectual unrest. Economic and 
commercial rivalries had developed a certain strain of in- 
dividualism which had given trouble to the authorities often 
enough. This attitude of individualism had flowered into 
great literature ; Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio had given 
gradually developing expression to the new life that was 
to call the old in question. These all lived in the four- 
teenth century. Petrarch, especially, had opened the very 
floodgates of the hidden life of the Middle Ages; he was 
the first of genuinely modern writers. He reveals the whole 
gamut of human passion, — aspiration, ideal, and suffering, 
— analysing the self not as immortal soul, but as the sub- 
ject of a wonderful range of experiences having human 
meanings and values. Whatever this rebirth may have 
meant in other lands, in other times, in Italy it meant some- 
thing profoundly human, profoundly personal, internal, 
expansive, revolutionary. Three phases of this new, ex- 
panding life must be noted here, especially by way of con- 
trast with the narrow world of medievalism. 

First, there emerged here in Italy, as we have briefly 
noted, a new world of the emotions, as opposed to the dry 
and formal intellectualism of medievalism. Now, as never 
before, reality seems to exist in the immediate experiences, 
the feelings and emotions of life, especially those which are 
unusually vivid ; and those who have found their way into 
this new experience revel in the beauty of the world, in the 
poetry of nature, in the rich and varied life of the senses. 
When we set this expression of life over against the official 
emotions and perfected standards of the old order, we see 
how far the modern age was going astray from beaten 
paths. 

Second, there emerged a new social world, as opposed to 
the institutionally perfect social order of the Middle Ages. 
This was the world of human relationships and fellowships 



182 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

which came as the natural development out of the new 
recognition of emotion and feeling. The sense of human- 
ity, the sympathies of common life, the romantic loves and 
tender friendships of the modern times began to appear, to 
be accepted as proper to the world. Life became rich in its 
opportunities for the development of these social relation- 
ships, and a sort of "heaven-on-this-earth" conception 
seemed to take the place of that now somewhat uncertain 
"Heaven" of the medieval promise. 

Third, there emerged a new physical world, the world of 
common nature in place of that world of base nature, in op- 
position to which the ideals of medievalism found their set- 
ting. Nature to the medievalist was hard, harsh, soulless, 
unless, indeed, it was tenanted by those dark spirits which 
lent their aid to the magicians with their "black arts." 
Nature was evil, something to be escaped from, a weight 
that dragged the soul in the mire, the "body of death." 
But in the rebirth of the human spirit something of the 
old Greek emotion attached itself to nature ; nature became 
the setting of human experience, the field for man's life- 
work, the home of his spirit. Out of this new feeling to- 
ward nature comes the whole development of modern sci- 
ence, — man's power of control over the energies of the 
universe, — as well as the whole development of the new 
practical and artistic life of the modern world. 

The "Revival of Learning." — But such new experiences 
of feeling, of social intercourse, and of a friendly nature 
overwhelmed man as soon as the first swift rush of joy was 
over. The medieval spirit of fear of all things earthly 
will intrude. Men find themselves in the state of mind of 
the child who has run away from school for a joyful, for- 
getful holiday far from books and lessons in the deep and 
cool recesses of the spring woods, but who must explain 
things at the end of the day. After all, are these new ex- 



THE RENAISSANCE 183 

periences real? Is beauty a proper ideal? May human- 
ity be happy? When the ideals of "other-worldliness" 
are given up in order that men may indulge themselves in 
the temporary experiences of the senses, the feelings, and 
emotions, hard, cold, unyielding habit comes back at length 
and stands like an accusing schoolmaster, demanding: 
"What have you to say for yourselves; why shall not pun- 
ishment be pronounced upon you?" And the whole struc- 
ture of beauty and freedom seems about to fall to pieces 
about the truants. 

And these new experiences, so varied, so rich in color, 
so redolent of the world of humanity and nature, so ex- 
pressive of the pent-up energies and the stifled emotions 
of the thousand buried years, must justify themselves as 
being truly human, i.e., as ministering to genuinely human 
developments; must submit to the criticism that will pare 
away their excesses; must consent to that larger fulfilment 
of which they are admittedly but the first faint promise. 

And where shall they turn for this justification, this criti- 
cism, this suggestion as to the larger fulfilment of these 
incipient experiences? Is there in human history any 
justification for these human hopes? If so, where? 
Where else but in those original fountains of natural liv- 
ing, those original sources of artistic criticism, in that life 
which first joined beauty and knowledge into a perfect 
practice, — in Greece herself? As the wise school-child, re- 
turning home after the stolen holiday to meet the chidings 
of the adult world, appeals from those chidings to the mem- 
ories of youth, so this age of the Renaissance appealed from 
the prudent maxims of an over-intellectualized age to the 
memories of that age's childhood, to the childhood of the 
world. "Greece shall justify us in these new experiences. 
If they be overdone, Greece shall teach us how to criticise 
away their exaggerations; if they fall short of complete- 



184 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ness, Greece shall teach us how to fulfill our lives along this 
rediscovered way of life." So the great search for the 
culture-materials of the Greeks began and went on apace 
and out of these experiences emerged a new antiquity. The 
barren abstractions of Aristotle passed into oblivion, save 
in the official philosophies. In their place came the over- 
flowing richness of life in the poets of the morning of the 
world, the first ''humanists." The whole wealth of classical 
culture gradually dawned upon the age, answering the 
deepest needs of these rebellious, hopeful minds. The Ren- 
aissance was a revolt against a state of mind. It bred a 
new state of mind, which was at first naturally timorous 
and doubtful of its own reality and validity, but it found 
refuge, justification, criticism, and fulfilment in the re- 
stored world of primitive joy and beauty of the Greeks. 

Here, as nowhere else in the history of education or cul- 
ture, the significance of the classics appears. The Greek 
classics are the full expression of a life that had grown 
almost completely human within the rather narrow world 
of the Greek city-state. The classics did not produce that 
Greek life; they expressed it, criticised it, justified it, en- 
riched it, fulfilled it, and gave it to the world of after time. 
So these classics did not produce the Renaissance ; that lies 
deep in the undercurrents of life and experience, as we have 
seen. But once the age had caught a glimpse of human 
joy and natural beauty, it needed the support and the criti- 
cism of other experiences, of other ages ; its own particular 
experiences must be universalized. It must be freed from 
the invidious opinion of the Middle Ages that particular 
experiences are unreal and unsafe, and it must be made to 
meet even the demands of the logic of Aristotle that that 
which is to be depended upon as real must be shown to be, 
or to have been, the experience of some other human being, 
some other group or age. The classics prove themselves 



THE RENAISSANCE 185 

really worth while, the finest educational materials the 
world knows, when they are thus used to support, to criti- 
cise, to fulfill, to universalize a mood, an experience, which 
otherwise would die of starvation or become impossible 
through undisciplined excesses. The age of the great hu- 
manists in Italy is one of the great educational periods of 
the world. The hungry soul of the race, starved for a 
thousand years or fed on the husk of dry theological dis- 
cussion, came to this new feast of life and beauty with 
almost terrifying avidity. Men came face to face with the 
fundamental realities of experience; never again would 
they go back to the old position of subordination to the 
machinery of a system, at least not completely. 

Educational Attitude of the Renaissance. — The educa- 
tion of the Middle Ages had been as unified as its compre- 
hensive social structure. Its materials were the careful 
gathering of the ages, selected to effect one certain end — 
the instruction of the soul for Heaven. Its methods were 
as certain and as effective; the Aristotelian position that 
the way to know anything is to go to work and learn it 
was the basic principle. These conceptions seemed all dis- 
solved as unrealities in the bright light of this new day. 
That old world could be known by the simple expedient of 
learning it. In its place has come a new world, a world 
of feeling, a world that cannot be known in the same way, 
a world that must be felt. That is to say, the Renaissance 
has intimations of new worlds of experience, rather than 
exact or complete realization of them. But if these new 
worlds cannot be known, how can the rising generation be 
educated? Does not education consist in filling the mind 
with knowledge ? We have already seen how the age itself 
was fed on the lavish bounty of the Greeks. We have 
noted that the Renaissance exhibited three aspects of the 
new world, each of which was eventually to become the 



186 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

basis of a clamorous program of education. These three 
aspects were the inner world of the emotions, the world of 
social relationships, and the world of physical nature. The 
first of these found its nourishment, as we have seen, in the 
Greek materials; the second will find its materials and its 
expression in the larger contacts with men in all phases of 
experience; the third will come to flower and fruition in 
the growing physical sciences. With these rich but still 
largely unknown worlds before the age, three educational 
avenues were thus more or less vaguely apparent: first, 
into the still unrealized treasures of antiquity ; second, into 
the broadening realms of the social world; third, into the 
utterly unsuspected fields of nature. Each of these lines 
of development will, as we shall see, yield its rich fruitage 
for the enlargement of human life, or, failing this, become 
a burden for the modern world to bear. 

Meanwhile we must not forget that the whole emphasis 
of life has changed from reliance upon the hopes of another 
world, with whatever of mighty machinery may be neces- 
sary to make sure of the attainment of that world, to a pro- 
found sense of the worth of the present world. Life has 
assumed an almost pagan character. Even the leaders of 
the church read their Greek poets more than their Bible, 
The zest for the human and the beautiful has found match- 
less expression in the arts. This inner spirit of revolt, the 
spirit of the Renaissance, has flowered into all forms of art, 
especially sculpture, architecture, and painting. The en- 
ergies of this southern rebirth will overflow, or be met with 
like expression, in many another land, especially in the 
North where the slower life will take it up at a later time, 
but will keep it the more surely. Here is a fire of new en- 
ergy that shall not be lightly quenched. Here is a light 
that shall yet lighten the whole world. Here is an inspira- 



THE RENAISSANCE 187 

tion that shall quicken the whole race. Here are life and 
growth and beauty and hope — all that the world can want 
of promise, but containing much, also, that the world little 
suspects in the way of individual and social problems and 
realizations. 

Yet here is the mightiest task of the ages ahead of this 
age. It was a tremendous accomplishment to build the 
structure of the Middle Ages which should house the ma- 
jestic spirit of medievalism. But here is the task of build- 
ing a world which shall be forever open to the light, for- 
ever advancing with the new day, forever hopeful of un- 
realized experiences. It will be not a finished world hous- 
ing a perfect system and ideal, but a living and growing 
world, the home of a living and growing ideal. It will 
take all the deepest hopes of the ages, wrought out through 
political, social, industrial, and religious struggles, to make 
this ideal root itself deep in the profoundest meanings of 
life; it will take all the contacts and conflicts of the social 
ages to save it from superficiality; it will take all the un- 
foreseen developments of all the sciences to give it place in 
the world of accepted intelligence. And age by age will 
the race despair of its realization and seek to retreat into 
the old sureties of medievalism, or into some modified as- 
pects of that old system, making itself believe that it has 
found a nobler refuge. Democracy, liberty, freedom of 
thinking, access to the uncontrolled sources of truth — all 
are involved; and in this struggle for unrealizable ideals 
men will often, in the words of Gilbert Murray, "lose their 
nerve." Yet not permanently nor for long. That which 
was begun in the Renaissance as a sort of romantic holiday 
of the spirit has become the world's most serious and un- 
ending task, the struggle for democracy whose price is eter- 
pal vigilance. In this struggle education, the application 



188 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

of intelligence in constructive ways, is central. And we 
must see more fully now the educational significance and 
outcome of these profound experiences. 

But before we take up the educational significances of 
these phases of the Renaissance we must turn to a general 
survey along a number of lines of the ways in which this 
spirit of the new age worked itself out in the modern 
world. These lines of survey will give us the needed back- 
ground for the discussion of the educational developments 
of the period since the Renaissance. 



CHAPTER XXI 

BIRTH-THROES OF THE MODERN WORLD 

The Renaissance was after all little more than a great 
resurgence of old repressed phases of human feeling and 
emotion. This rebirth was most important, but mostly as 
a prelude to other more exacting developments. For hu- 
manity is something more than feeling and emotion. In- 
deed, feelings and emotions must come to be something 
other than themselves if they are not to be blown away by 
some cold wind out of the past. They must find their true 
meaning in the wider and more permanent phases of hu- 
man life. They must penetrate into the world of institu- 
tions and social attitudes. They must help to remake the 
conventional social and intellectual attitudes. 

Buried under more than a thousand years of historical 
accumulation that freer world of feeling and hope and 
achievement came to life but slowly. The first outburst 
of the feelings was refreshingly sudden. But the com- 
plete realization of this promise was the slow task of the 
centuries. The old religious institutions must be made to 
feel these reconstructive forces, and must come to a new 
expression. The old scholastic intellect must be shaken 
out of its routines and catch step with the feelings of the 
new world. The old political absolutisms must be de- 
stroyed and the world must have a "new birth of free- 
dom." The old feudal tyrannies in industry must be 
abolished and the age of free contract must come in. The 
whole modern period is a period of "bringing to birth." 

189 



190 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

We must take time here to note four phases of these 
"birth-throes of the modern world." 

A. RELIGIOUS REBIRTH : THE REFORMATION 

Relation of the Reformation to the Renaissance. — The 
Renaissance brought the promise and to a large extent the 
reality of a new emotional freedom to the race. Men's 
fears could no longer be controlled by the threats of death 
and punishment in another world; the race escaped from 
this degradation of life and began to look about for other 
avenues of action and other phases of freedom. The whole 
religious life was most closely bound up in the old me- 
dieval system; and the realization of freedom in the inner 
world of poetry and beauty found its first possibility of ad- 
vance in the effort to make the religious experience a life of 
the same complete freedom. The logic of the Middle Ages 
had worked for a fixed and unified type of life and expe- 
rience ; the emotional overflow of the Renaissance had found 
exquisite pleasure in multiplicity and variety of types; 
the Reformation opens the way to a great diversity and 
variety of types in the religious field. The Reformation 
appears in the North, because of the different interests of 
the people there. In the South of Europe religion was 
something of an esthetic affair, a sort of adornment of the 
life. The new birth was therefore esthetic, rather than 
ethical. In the North, among the Teutonic peoples, religion 
was an ethical concern, a matter of most fundamental sig- 
nificance. Hence the primary revolt in the North was the 
religious one. 

Primary Nature of the Reformation. — The Reformation 
was another resurgence of primitive life from its original 
sources. The Middle Ages had taught that men live by in- 
stitutional relationships; that is to say, an individual has 
no real existence apart from his membership in the institu- 



THE REFORMATION 191 

tions of the world. Hence outside the church individuals 
had no ultimate significance, no worth, no goodness. ''The 
good man has become good through his partaking of the 
goodness that is in the Church." But it was the primary- 
doctrine of the Reformation, of Luther, that "The good 
man shall live by his own faith"; that is to say, "There 
is goodness which is not in any institution, which is ante- 
cedent to all institutions. All men have access to this Good- 
ness, and they can live without the Church. ' ' In its purest 
form this is, of course, the statement of primitive Chris- 
tianity come to life again. It denies that institutional 
membership is the assurance of the goodness of the indi- 
vidual. It even asserts that institutions themselves need 
to be saved from their stagnation and inertia and corrup- 
tions. In its original form it goes so far as to say that 
institutions must answer at the bar of individual judgment 
for their right to control the individual. It asserts that 
religion is not something given to men from a great store- 
house, like Plato 's ' ' Heaven of Reality ' ' ; rather religion is 
something inherent in the very nature of man, requiring the 
experiences of life to call it forth, to give it room. At any 
rate, Luther does not hesitate to declare that his religious 
nature and his religious destiny are both safe, even though 
he cuts himself ofi:" from the authorized channel of supply. 
Indeed he rather asserts that both these values are safer 
outside the church than inside it, under existing condi- 
tions. 

The Dilemma of Protestantism. — Luther did not fully 
see, though before he died he felt it acutely enough, the 
terrible dilemma into which the Reformation plunged the 
religious man. That dilemma is as follows: The medie- 
val church had provided universal standards of doctrine, 
emotion, and conduct for its members. There was no need 
of intelligence, of course, on the part of the member. Im- 



192 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

plicit obedience was all that was required of him, and if he 
made mistakes through ignorance, these could be com- 
pounded with the authorities. But when the individual 
steps out upon his own faith, his own religious nature, his 
own goodness, he finds himself in a world of individual un- 
certainties. The full implication of this individual right of 
judgment leads to complete destruction of all set standards ; 
we are back in the days of the Sophists, where one man's 
opinion is just as good as another's. What shall be done? 
The authority of the church, of the papacy, is overthrown ; 
shall every man become his own all-sufficient authority? 

On this question Luther himself recanted. If we admit 
that every man shall become his own authority, the only 
escape from the pitfall of the Sophists is in the develop- 
ment of reason in every individual, the proposal of Socrates, 
Luther had at first found it possible to accept this authority 
of reason, calling it "something divine"; but when he real- 
ized how that involved the right of every ignorant, undis- 
ciplined individual to set up his own opinions as having 
full authority with the learned conclusions of men who had 
actually spent years in getting to the heart of a matter, he 
came to the sad conclusion that ''the more subtle and acute 
is reason, the more poisonous a beast it is." There was 
left, therefore, for Luther and men like himself, — men who 
had thrown over the authority of the church, yet who could 
not accept the final authority of reason, — nothing but the 
authority of the Bible. The Bible becomes the "all-suf- 
ficient rule of faith and practice." 

But this but carries the dilemma back one step further. 
The Bible itself is open to various interpretations, not to 
say various translations. Who shall determine the author- 
itative version and meaning? Shall we have an author- 
ized body of leaders who will declare to us the safe and 
sure rules? Then we are back in the bondage of external 



THE REFORMATION 193 

authority once more; we should have done well to remain 
inside that great historic church whose authority has the 
weight of tradition back of it, whose decisions are based on 
a thousand years of precedent ! 

Is there any real stopping-place for the protestant before 
he comes to the recognition of reason as the final authority 
for the individual? Are not all other stopping-places un- 
safe, insecure, dangerous to his moral and intellectual in- 
tegrity? Such questions as these must be asked, because 
democracy is involved in the progress of a religion that 
shall dare to be as free as life itself. The whole movement 
of the modern world is toward freedom. Religious ener- 
gies ought to opeip. the way for this onward movement, just 
as in the Reformation religious interests and impulses car- 
ried the Renaissance over into the actualities of life. 

The Fate of Protestantism. — Protestantism was origin- 
ally built on the doctrine of the freedom of the individual 
conscience. Narrow dogmatism was its immediate outcome. 
Logically, the authority of the Bible is exactly the same as 
the authority of the pope ; it is an imposed external author- 
ity attempting to control life and belief and conduct. But 
psychologically it is different; for while the authority of 
the pope holds the adherents of that authority together in 
one fixed communion, the authority of the Bible, working 
through many individual interpretations, divides the Prot- 
estant world up into many diverse, antagonistic, bickering, 
even bitter, sects, each claiming to be the truest exponent 
of the actual teachings of the sacred scripture. In fact, 
the history of Protestantism for two hundred years after 
Luther shows that it was little if any more tolerant of in- 
dividual conscience than was Catholicism. Calvin's treat- 
ment of the young Doctor Servetus in Geneva is an illus- 
tration of what the intelligent Protestant could do to pre- 
serve the faith from hurt by the free individual. 



194 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

It is just the persistence of the old folkway attitude. 
The human mind tears itself free from an old institution 
whose arbitrary authority it can no longer endure, but it 
does not tear itself free from institutionalisrn. It proceeds 
to construct a new institution for its own refuge, and then 
all the old institutional sanctities gather around this new 
structure. From within the old structure the ideals of in- 
dependence of individual thought, individual responsibility 
in conduct, free life on the basis of reason, had all seemed 
the revelation of a divine new order. Rebellion from the 
old brings freedom to realize the new. The new is con- 
structed, but the rebel under the old system has now become 
the center of authority under the new order, and he sub- 
mits to the individual disagreement of his underlings with 
just as little grace as was manifested toward himself under 
the old system. The Pilgrims in America are standard ex- 
amples of this folkway tendency. 

Protestantism, in the sense which Luther first gave it, 
cannot exist without freedom of intelligence, genuine lib- 
erty of the individual reason. Free religion can only find 
itself at home in the world of free science. But when Eras- 
mus wrote of the tendency of the times, ''Wherever Luth- 
eranism rules, there the sciences are neglected," he wrote 
the beginning of the end of that fundamental Protestant- 
ism which was the first hope of the Reformation. 

The Results of the Reformation. — Three main types of 
life emerge from the Reformation period; or at least the 
suggestion of three types. There is first the Catholic type 
which, reorganized, pared of some of its excesses, and re- 
constituted in the counter-reformation, came forth to con- 
tinue in large measure the presentation to the world of that 
majestic and final interpretation of life, social ideal, and 
education which had been worked out under the dominance 
of the Middle Ages. This still-powerful bearer of tradi- 



THE REFORMATION 195 

tion of the Middle Ages represents the great conservative 
interpretation and organization of life. Holding a more 
consistent position than orthodox Protestantism holds, it 
makes powerful appeal to all who feel the struggle of the 
world too great for them ; it offers retreat for multitudes of 
men and women who want assurance and certainty of doc- 
trine ; and it promises to remain one of the abiding powers 
in the education of the race and in the organization of the 
people — just as long, at least, as there are those who demand 
a world of fixed meanings within which to live. 

The second of these types which emerged from the Refor- 
mation may be called the Protestant type. The Protestant 
has had much to do with the course of history since the 
Reformation. He has occupied an anomalous position and 
has helped to make these centuries of history bloody and 
difficult. Some things he has been willing to leave to the 
determination of reason ; other things he has stood for with 
all the intolerance of a primitive bigot. To be sure, Prot- 
estants range all the way from those who are scarcely to 
be distinguished from Catholics to those who claim to be 
absolutely liberated from the tyranny of ecclesiastical rule. 
Socially, the Protestant has been a constructive force in 
modern history. Logically, however, he has occupied an 
impossible position. He has been neither bound nor free. 
Perhaps for that very reason he has been able to accom- 
plish much. He has fought for freedom with all the terri- 
ble enthusiasm which moves other men to fight for an 
eternal dogma. He has won freedom, — within limits set 
by his own desires, — and he has, in turn, denied the right 
to liberty to all who have disagreed with him. He has 
been at once the most bitter foe of old orthodoxies and the 
uncompromising champion of new orthodoxies. He repre- 
sents in striking fashion the description of the member 
of the folkways set forth in a former chapter. Each sue- 



196 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

cessive reconstruction of a world of habit supersedes all 
previous constructions. It satisfies; it becomes identified 
with the world itself. It is not merely the last formulation 
of the world; it is the world. Plence the standards of 
action, conduct, and belief found therein are all final stand- 
ards, and since the member of the group lives by them (at 
least he fancies he does), he attempts to apply them to all 
other individuals, or at least to all who would join his 
group. 

The third type of life that emerged from the Eeforma- 
tion period may be called the secular. This is, of course, 
not new; but from the Reformation forward the secular 
type comes to assume a new significance and importance. 
Its affiliations are with the old Greek ideal of a free and 
balanced life; it found a certain renewal in the saner side 
of the Renaissance. And since the Reformation this type 
has found fullest expression in, and given fullest support 
to, the modem movements in science, political and social 
reform, and kindred efforts to make this world a worthy 
place for man's living. This secular interest has not been 
anti-religious, but for the most part it has been anti-sec- 
tarian and anti-dogmatic. Sometimes it has been accused 
of being atheistic ; mostly it has professed to be agnostic. 
Its religion has been of a natural sort; its beliefs have 
grown out of the advances of science; its interests have 
been human, rather than other-worldly. But a good deal 
of modern progress may be set down to its account. 

The Reformation was not a simple incident in the his- 
tory of humanity. It was, in its beginnings, a profoundly 
disturbing revolution which undertook to do too much at 
one time. It dug up the soil and showed the roots of hu- 
man aspiration and necessity underneath, and then at- 
tempted to restore the old sods. That was impossible. 
Since then all sorts of curious growths have been sprouting 



THE REFORMATION 197 

up, some good, some indifferent, some evil, but all have been 
experiments in the search for the understanding of human 
nature. The great pity is that these have not been looked 
upon as experiments, to be made and tested and judged, 
and then kept or discarded as the results approve. Men 
cling to their modern superstitions as tenaciously as ever 
the primitive man hoarded his fetishes. 

But there was implicit in the Reformation a doctrine of 
human experience which is being realized in modern sci- 
ence and democracy: the freedom of the human spirit and 
the right of the individual to access to the sources of truth. 
The working out of this fine ideal into a genuine program 
of education lies still in the future. The modern world 
has dallied with it and wished for it, but never really 
dared to attempt it in fullness of will. It is the largest task 
of the present moment. Science is, on the whole, ready for 
it, as we shall see; democracy, that is, political democracy, 
is not quite sure about it; religion, whether Catholic or 
Protestant, is mostly afraid of it. It means the realization 
of a full social and industrial democracy, which is a fasci- 
nating and at the same time an appalling ideal. Its fate is 
held in the secrets of the future. 

Other phases of this problem must engage us now, 
though eventually we shall come to the story of the educa- 
tional program that stretches from the Reformation to the 
present time, and which gives intimations of what the fu- 
ture of education is to be. 

B. INTELLECTUAL REBIRTH: THE RISE OF SCIENCE 

It is a hopeless task, of course, to attempt to tell the 
story of the development of science through the modern 
period in a brief chapter. That will not be undertaken. 
But the fact of the rise of the attitude of science, as over 
against the attitude of scholastic learning, is probably the 



198 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

most important fact in the whole range of modern experi- 
ence ; and that must be clearly set forth. 

Medieval Science. — We have already seen that the master 
mind of the later Middle Ages was Aristotle. Not all the 
sins of that period should be laid at his door, however, for 
in his own time he opened to the world great areas of the 
unexplored, and at times, at least, he came close to the bor- 
derland of actual experimental science. But he came down 
upon the Middle Ages as the exponent of the closed system 
of medieval thinking; his logic set the absolute limits to- 
human endeavor and closed all avenues of progress. He 
turned back the intellectual life of the world upon itself; 
and since the intellect cannot be endlessly busy with rou- 
tine things, because, if there is no worthy task upon which 
intelligence may expend its energies, it must find some 
unworthy object, Aristotle may be justly accused of being 
largely responsible for the absurdities of much medieval 
science. That is to say, there is no real room in an abso- 
lute system for science ; hence intelligence must either go to 
sleep in such a system or seek illicit pleasures outside the 
system. Some indication of these illicit pleasures may be 
found in the developments of alchemy and astrology in the 
later Middle Ages. Of course these pseudo-sciences were 
very old, dating from old folkway conceptions of the race ; 
and nothing shows more clearly the essential "folkway" 
nature of the medieval world than the welcome which old 
folkway conceptions continuously received in that period. 

Roger Bacon declared that he would be glad to see the 
works of Aristotle burned, because there was nothing in 
them of value for the new age and they were the cause of 
endless errors and ignorance. One lasting limitation of 
the Greek view of the world was their belief that thinking 
itself brings us to the truth ; and Aristotle, despite his own 
attempts to observe the world of nature, really brings us 



THE RISE OF SCIENCE 199 

back to a nature woven mostly of thinking, of which, indeed, 
thinking is the real key. Scholasticism grows out of and 
lives upon this conception. The scholastics are, as Francis 
Bacon observed, like spiders that spin endless webs out of 
their own bodies. These endless webs of scholastic thought 
wrapped the human mind about. The tasks of escaping 
from them, of tearing them to pieces, of facing the world 
with fresh minds, and of working out the new methods of 
scientific procedure are all in the future. These tasks will 
be many-sided. They will involve new psychologies, new 
logics, new methods of investigation covering many ranges 
of experience, new conceptions of the nature of the world 
and of human experience, and new philosophies. Human 
nature, human credulity, will be subjected to many shocks 
and many strains. The unbelievable will become the com- 
monplace ; the unpredictable will continually happen. The 
unknown will be transformed ; it will no longer be the realm 
of certain terrors, but will become the limitless promise of 
beneficent gifts to humanity which the brave may search out 
and bring to the uses of life. Uncompromising intelli- 
gence, slowly organizing its forces for the great task, will 
transform the borderland of human living from a realm 
of certain evil forces into a land of uncertainly endless pos- 
sibilities of human good. 

The New Universe. — First must come the larger trans- 
formation of the structure of the universe itself. The old, 
earth-centered universe of the Ptolemaic cosmology gives 
place, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to the new 
sun-centered universe of Copernicus. It is a type of the 
whole modern movement of thought. But the new system 
of Copernicus was not easily accepted. Not only was it re- 
pugnant to the minds of most men who were steeped in the 
doctrines of the church, — which held the earth to be the most 
important of the worlds of space, — but even leading scien- 



200 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

tists did not agree, — Tycho Brahe, one of the really great 
astronomers of all ages, being one of these. But Kepler 
appeared with his "Laws of Planetary Motion"; and later 
Galileo, discovering the uses of the telescope, watched the 
movements of the heavenly bodies and helped to bring con- 
viction to the minds of men, although he brought ecclesi- 
astical condemnation upon himself by thus demonstrating 
the unbelievable and the undesirable. 

The New Physics. — Galileo was also responsible for lay- 
ing the foundation of the new science of physics, which 
should be able to deal with matter and motion within this 
new universe in intelligible terms. Along with his name we 
must place those of William Gilbert, who by his work in 
magnetism and other forms of electrical energy helped to 
lay the foundations of all modern developments in that 
field; Torricelli, who demonstrated the fact that air has 
weight and who invented the barometer ; Robert Boyle, who 
carried the whole question of the pressure of gases further ; 
Sir Isaac Newton, who first showed that light was not a 
simple phenomenon, and who set forth the first comprehen- 
sive statement of the law of universal gravitation ; and per- 
haps Laplace, who gave the first modern expression of the 
origin of the solar system. 

The New Biology. — Aristotle's four fundamental sub- 
stances and four "essences" could not satisfy the new age; 
but the transition to a new outlook was difficult here, more 
difficult than in physics, because it dealt with concerns that 
were nearer to the intimate life of men. The transition 
period is a period of magic, of slowly disappearing miracles, 
and of the gradual appearance of conceptions that are dis- 
tinctly modern. Paracelsus is representative of this transi- 
tion era. He studied living forms at first hand, and he 
threw suspicion upon the medieval scholars. But he did 
not escape from the magical conceptions of the times. 



THE EISE OF SCIENCE 201 

Harvey (1578-1657), on the other hand, does almost com- 
pletely escape; he demonstrates the principle of the circu- 
lation of the blood. From this time forward biological 
studies come gradually out into the clear light of modern 
science. 

We have not space here to go into the full discussion 
of the extension of human knowledge in the great centuries 
of discovery and exploration. Geographically, the earth 
was made over quite as completely as was the universe. 
At the same time the discovery of new races in hitherto 
unknown lands made old theories of humanity untenable ; 
the beginnings of anthropology must soon appear. In the 
course of the years studies in biology become comparative, 
i.e., comparisons appear between various animal forms and 
a certain likeness of structure and function becomes ap- 
parent. In the rocks of the earth fossils exist; the expla- 
nations given by Aristotle no longer satisfy nor do those of 
the medieval romancers. A new explanation will soon ap- 
pear ; the earth itself has had a long, eventful, even a tragic 
history. The likeness of man to lower forms, at least in an- 
atomical ways, will attract attention. Many lines of evi- 
dence, all converging toward a common end, will gradu- 
ally force home upon the race the conception that man 
was not "created," as old folkway traditions all relate. 
Man is not a stranger on the earth, put into it after all 
other processes were finished; he is of the earth itself, 
wrought of the self-same processes, though doubtless more 
highly wrought; his reality is the reality of the universe 
itself. In short, a theory of evolution is proposed. 
Henceforth all constructive science will lie within this gen- 
eral theory. The world itself will cease to be fixed fact; 
it will become process. Science will little by little give up 
its fixed substances and its vital essences, and by stating 
the world, including life itself, in terms of the most simple 



202 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

elements of mechanics, understanding will take the place 
of superstition and control will take the place of chance 
and fate. Thus actual approach to the data of experience 
brings the world to a complete rejection of the general me- 
dieval construction of the world; and in place of that con- 
struction modern scientific thinking has given us a world 
of simple elements, organized and interrelated in recogniz- 
able ways, in the midst of which human aspirations seem to 
have a surer ground and human hopes a more complete 
control of their own essential destinies. Having in this 
brief fashion faced the intellectual movement on one side, 
we must now face a corresponding line of interrelated de- 
velopment. 

The Philosophical Movement Through the Modern 
Period. — We have noted how on the scientific side little by 
little the work of the single individual scientist assumes the 
right to criticise and deny the whole accumulated mass of 
tradition from the past. Scientific investigation does not 
depend upon a consensus of opinion, but only upon the 
verification of observed fact. The experience of the indi- 
vidual scientist becomes the fertile field in which modern 
knowledge grows. Psychologically and philosophically, 
therefore, the world must be remade to meet the new facts. 
This first takes the form of complete ' ' enlightenment. ' ' All 
old dogmas shall be criticised out of existence, whether in 
religion, in politics, in ethics, or in education ; nothing shall 
remain but the clear ideas that cannot be doubted. AH 
else shall be swept out of the household of the new human- 
ity upon the dust heaps of the past ; the individual reason 
shall be the final court of appeal as to the reality of any 
particular of experience. 

This is the "enlightenment," an age which repeats in 
some ways the experience of the age of the Sophists in 
Greece. But reason outreasoned itself and became utterly 



THE RISE OF SCIENCE 203 

artificial, resulting in the destruction of most of the graces 
of life, giving to religion the superficialities of the deism 
of the eighteenth century and to poetry the pedantic hard- 
ness of Pope and Dryden. 

Of course such a tendency could not be permanent. Hu- 
manity cannot long endure the denial of its best elements. 
** Romanticism" brought back the warmth of the inner life 
of the emotions. Rousseau denied the right of institutional- 
ized reason to prey upon the feelings of men. Man comes 
back to a belief in himself. The French Revolution is, from 
one point of view, but the full expression of this funda- 
mental restoration of man's faith in his own human worth. 

But the whole problem of the significance of the intel- 
lectual is thus obscured. In the "enlightenment" the in- 
tellect triumphs and life becomes scarcely worth while; in 
the "romantic" movement the worth of human living re- 
turns, but the intellect is subordinated to the feelings. 
Then Kant comes in to reconstruct the whole problem. He 
carries out the revolutionary work of the past three cen- 
turies. He brings the "Copernican revolution" into the 
world of thought. The natural world of our experience is, 
itself, the construction of the mind ; the mind is creator and 
lawgiver of the world. The mind is not molded by things ; 
things conform to the mind in the process of becoming 
known. What we know depends upon the mind 's powers of 
knowing, and we know what we know according to the 
methods of the mind that is engaged in the knowing. 

The mind thus becomes the creative agent in the making 
of the world of experience. It creates both truth and false- 
hood ; therefore it needs to learn how to create truly. Thus 
the problem becomes one once more with the problem of 
science, and science and philosophy join hands in the work- 
ing out of the fundamental theory of evolution which is to 
displace the old theory of creation and give a genuine place 



204 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

for thinking in the growth of a world whose psychology is 
the psychology of the creative, active experience. 

Some Special Problems. — Thus that "inner life," lost 
through the Middle Ages and emerging fitfully in the Ren- 
aissance and the Reformation, comes now to have some 
real security. Conduct belongs to the moral personality, 
not to institutions and dogmas. All the outer world, if it is 
to have worth for the individual, must be founded upon and 
grow out of the experience of the individual, giving room 
for the expression of his will. External law must make 
room for free moral activity; the "Laws of Nature" are but 
the regulations which man's creative reason imposes upon 
nature. Man rises above the world of nature and begins 
to control his own destiny. 

To be sure, this is a result that is temporary ; science and 
philosophy react upon each other all through the nine- 
teenth century. Science does not always know its own con- 
sistency, does not always follow '4-S own logic. There are 
conflicts with old orthodoxies of all sorts. Religion refuses 
to yield one jot of its old prerogatives and seems to be 
slowly dispossessed. Science would reduce all the phe- 
nomena of the world, including mind, to simple mechanisms. 
The mind refuses thus to commit suicide. But through it 
all, thinking goes on, observation advances, data accumu- 
late, and hypotheses are advanced, criticised, and discarded. 
The world is electric with advancing thought and far out 
upon the frontiers of science the lights of the pioneers shine 
cheerily through the dark. It is an age worth living in. 
History is not ended. We are in the very midst of history, 
not the folkway life, but the life of movement, of change. 
The evolutionary process is going on all about us, the 
search for higher adaptations, for the life that is good. 
And science, intelligence, is central in that search for the 
good life. 



THE RISE OF SCIENCE 205 

The problem of science is slowly defined. Wliat is the 
place of intelligence in human living? Is it the working 
out of a formal "body of systematized truth"? Sometimes 
the older ''sciences" seem to take that point of view as 
they stand idly by and lend no helping hand in the strug- 
gle of the younger sciences to find secure footing in the 
mazes of old methods. But on the whole, science comes 
slowly to the acceptance of a really great task, to wit, "the 
working out of the conditions under which a good life is 
possible to man, ' ' as Paulsen states it. The world is richer 
in materials than ever before. Is it richer in living ? Na- 
ture, society, the new universes, the new realizations of 
social order, the utterly new methods and materials of liv- 
ing — do these make human life more worth while ? All the 
old cultures of the world, too, have been round about the 
modern period in increasing fullness; but these have not 
satisfied, for the modern period could not return into the 
folkways. In the main the face of humanity has been to- 
ward the future all through the modern period ; and when 
we consider the amount of work that has been accomplished 
since Bacon, we must admit that the age has been wonder- 
fully active. 

Yet other tasks remain to be done. Science must get on 
with its work. The life of the individual must be com- 
pletely emancipated along all constructive lines. He must 
become free in three great directions, with that freedom 
which the truth alone can give : 

(a) In his capacity to work creativelj^, joyfully, and in- 
telligently in his chosen field ; 

(b) In his capacity to share with others the products of 
his work and theirs, and the common responsibilities of 
common living; 

(c) In his capacity to know. It was the fate of the mil- 
lions of the Middle Ages that they found themselves always 



206 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

"on the outside." They did not belong; they did not 
know the secrets of the chosen. But the science and the 
democracy of the modern world are declaring that all men 
must have the chance to be "on the inside" with whatever 
democracy is accomplishing or dreaming and hoping. 
These great freedoms in action, feeling, and knowing are 
but the necessary and logical implications of the promises 
that have emerged in all the "rebirths" of the modern 
world, in Renaissance, Reformation, revolution, and en- 
lightenment. 

The world is becoming immeasurably complicated along 
all these lines, complicated with details of information and 
with new scientific enterprises and technics. Intelligence 
is prying into endless numbers of dark crannies of experi- 
ence. We are in danger of being lost under the accumu- 
lations of experiences. We must learn the lesson taught by 
Socrates: nothing but whole ideas growing out of real ex- 
periences, tested by actual fires of experience and purified 
through vital contacts with the world 's doings, can take the 
place of the "half -thoughts" of our pseudo-science and our 
ephemeral philosophies. In an age like this, when social 
order seems to be lost in world-anarchy, "the one power 
that can save, can heal, can fortify, is clear and intelligent 
thought. Opinion, that is, real thinking, is no longer a 
parlor game, a matter of dinner-table conversation ; it is a 
relentless necessity if we are to keep the flag of sanity 
flying above this tortured world. ' ' 

The chance to think, the materials with which to think, 
the stimulus to think — these must become the possession of 
every individual, else he will fall between fragments of the 
world and be lost. This is especially the task of education 
in a democracy. How shall men be helped to think ? How 
shall they be stimulated to thinking? How shall they be 
secured in the materials with which to think sanely and 



THE RISE OF SCIENCE 207 

constructively? Let the schools answer these questions. 

Life still grows up in the midst of common habit, as in the 
primitive world, and always must so grow. But the world 
of men and affairs is now no longer the small perceptual 
world of the primitive group, with its limited horizons and 
its meanings clearly open before us. The modern world 
continuously demands a broader intelligence, a freer moral 
energy, a quicker civic sense, a greater industrial adapta- 
bility, a more thorough appreciation of the spiritual values 
that make humanity. There is but one escape from these 
demands: complete surrender to some fixed routine, the 
sinking of all personality in the mechanics of industry, thus 
proving the charge that "never before in history has it 
been so easy for a simpleton to live. ' ' 

Education must face these new and larger demands, 
which grow larger continually. The history of education 
in the modern period is sketched against the background of 
these great revolutionary and reformatory protests against 
the iron-clad systems of the Middle Ages. Education must 
face the conflicts of the past with itself in the new order. 
It looks forward either to a complete return to the institu- 
tionalism of the Middle Ages or to the complete freedom of 
some as yet unrealized social democracy which shall learn 
how to use science as its means of living. The long years 
of struggle lie between us and that goal. Indeed, the goal 
of democracy is not a goal at all; it is a continuous alert- 
ness, a constant adaptability, an eternal vigilance. It is 
this unescapable fact that has made almost all nations in 
the past lose their nerve and give up the struggle. Will 
America also lose her nerve ? 

The great educational program that has been rolling in 
upon us throughout this modern period and emerging into 
the present may be stated somewhat as follows : How shall 
these great but still incomplete resources of knowledge, 



208 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

these great ideals of a constantly moving social order, these 
institutional treasures inherited out of the long past, — 
our understanding of experience and all other aspects of 
our modern world-life — be wrought into a working program 
for the continuous realization of the larger good in human 
living and the continuous re-creation of that larger good in 
the continuous generations? 

C. POLITICAL REBIRTH : REVOLUTION 

The political structure of the Middle Ages was in har- 
mony with the religious ideal and the ecclesiastical struc- 
ture. That structure may be described as follows : 

The whole is a continuous series of ascending steps or grades, 
drawing nearer and nearer to Life; a kind of ladder down which 
life may be passed from level to level; each level has to receive 
from one above and pass on to one below. In this scheme each 
part has its own special value and its own special work so long 
as it remains within the structure of the whole; it lapses into 
nothingness as soon as it makes itself separate. This conception 
of life took historical shape not only in the hierarchy of the 
church, but also in the feudal system of the Middle Ages, in 
which every power vested in any individual was regarded as a 
loan from the grade above.^ 

This describes the feudal political system and the hier- 
archy of the church. Down each of these, life, the right to 
live, the hope of life in the future, the commonest necessi- 
ties of life, were passed from the head of the church or the 
head of the state to the lower levels of society. This was 
the very climax of aristocratic society, with the holy sanc- 
tions of the church to give it permanence and control over 
the minds of men. 

This was the "larger folkway of the Middle Ages" based 
upon a return to the habitual attitudes of the primitive 
world, but organized now with all the strength of Roman 

1 Eucken : "JVIain Currents of Modern Thought," p. 343. 



POLITICAL KEVOLUTION 209 

political institution, Greek logic, and authoritative revela- 
tion from heaven to defend it from criticism or attack. It 
is as primitive a conception as that revealed in the old story 
of Cain. Within the group an individual is safe, protected, 
with some outlook toward the future ; outside the group he 
is nothing at all, an " outside-the-law, " "a fugitive and a 
wanderer in the earth," one whom anyone may freely slay, 
since there is no one to avenge his death. All good, all sig- 
nificance, is handed down from above, from the group, from 
the head of the group, from the super-head. Cut off from 
this source and channel of life, the individual becomes ut- 
terly useless and insignificant. 

The Dissent from this View. — The modern world has 
radically dissented and departed from this view. The 
Socratic doctrine had been different ; primitive Christianity 
had suggested something other; the Teutonic barbarians 
had developed a different attitude in their original insti- 
tutions. But Socrates was lost in the Platonic speculation ; 
primitive Christianity lost its original democracy in the 
growth of the doctrine of the transcendence of God, which 
called for a special class of priests who had special access 
to him and who made up the hierarchy; and the Teutonic 
simplicity was overwhelmed in the magnificence of Roman 
institutions, even when in decay. 

But there has developed in the course of the modern 
period a rather clear conception that is now striving to take 
the place of that other point of view. According to this 
democratic ideal, as we may call it, instead of being a mere 
fragment in the world, the individual now finds himself in 
a position of growing opportunity and responsibility; he 
may be himself a whole world, a kind of center of reality 
from which he may indefinitely establish ever wider rela- 
tionship with others. To be sure, the development of this 
ideal has not destroyed the existence of the other. The 



210 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

medieval attitude has not been broken down. The demo- 
cratic attitude is nowhere fully accepted, for it is so revo- 
lutionary in its implication as to frighten men, and it in- 
volves so much of general reconstruction of the world that 
the task can be said to be little more than begun. But 
everywhere in civilization the medieval attitude has been 
"toned down," and in many lands it is all but completely 
shattered. Even the present great war tends more and 
more toward the discrediting of medieval attitudes. 

But the struggle for democracy involves conflicts not 
alone in the political field. It must be fought out in all 
institutions and in every minutest aspect of our social and 
personal living — in industry, in religion, in social relation- 
ships, in morality, in the home, in actual legal attitudes, 
but especially in the schools and in education. The 
struggle for democracy is an expression of the determina- 
tion of the modern world to remake the whole range of 
social relationships under every possible aspect, and to 
construct a world in which every individual shall in truth 
became a "sanctuary in which life is immediately present 
in all its infinite greatness." And in this general struggle 
the political phase is a most important part of the problem. 

Incidents in the Long Struggle. — The Renaissance con- 
tributed the energy of freed emotions ; the Reformation was 
in large part a revolt of the oppressed peasantry against 
the conditions of industry; the growth of knowledge grad- 
ually brought disillusionment as to the realities and terrors 
of medievalism. Hence the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries saw the dissolution of the traditional doctrine of 
the supernatural foundations of the state and the growth of 
the doctrine of the natural foundations of political institu- 
tions. Although such an expression of absolutism as "I 
am the State" might be uttered by a French king in the 
seventeenth century; although the doctrine of "the divine 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION 211 

right of kings" lived on into the middle of the seventeenth 
century, even in England; yet feeling, knowledge, and ac- 
tion were all uniting for the decisive contest. 

The English Revolution began shortly after 1603 with 
the accession of the Stuarts to the throne. Cromwell's wars 
for liberty, the downfall of Charles the First, the Com- 
monwealth, the final overthrow of the Stuarts in 1689, and 
the adoption of the "Bill of Rights" — these events show 
the progress that was made in a single century against the 
medieval structure of absolute political control in one 
country. 

The American Revolution in the eighteenth century, the 
French Revolution a few years later, and the various revo- 
lutions of the nineteenth century in Europe and in Latin 
America, are phases in this world-movement. The English 
"Bill of Rights," the American "Declaration of Inde- 
pendence," the "Contrat Sociale" of Rousseau (though 
grossly overdone), were and are all monuments on the road 
of progress. These events all indicate the actual surging 
forward of the masses of men toward the eventual full 
participation in government and in the political determina- 
tion of the conditions of common welfare. 

Significance of this Forward Movement. — It is plainly 
seen that this forward movement of the masses of men in- 
volves the right of all men of all classes to pass judgment 
upon all sorts of questions. These questions may be inci- 
dental, unimportant, local; but they may also be funda- 
mental, supremely important, and involving universal 
issues such as the very destiny of the state or the whole 
progress of civilization. On these larger issues the masses 
of men, kept in absolute ignorance through scores of cen- 
turies and denied any personal share in the problems and 
responsibilities of government, are found to have little or no 
real comprehension of the issues involved, the values at 



212 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

stake, or the long struggles of history by which these values 
have been so far achieved. On the other hand, and this 
cannot be too much emphasized, the long struggles of his- 
tory, interpreted under the distorted doctrines of medi- 
evalism, gave to the ruling classes and groups a false esti- 
mate of their own grasp upon these great questions. Back 
of the proud boast, ' ' I am the State, ' ' lies implicit the pro- 
found assertion, "There is absolutely nothing important 
about the political problems of the day of which I am igno- 
rant"; which is, of course, almost, if not quite, as absurd 
and precarious a foundation upon which to build a political 
system as is the ignorance of the submerged peasant. As a 
matter of historic fact, there is more hope for the world in 
the undisguised ignorance of the peasant who may learn 
than there is in the boundless assumption of the aristocrat 
who already knows all and who feels it his largest duty to 
set himself firmly against the introduction of any new 
element into the political order. But all these things sim- 
ply mean that this forward movement finds its most tre- 
mendous problem in the development of an intelligence 
equal to its great social task, and therefore the develop- 
ment and organization of an education that shall be as com- 
pletely democratic as the spirit of this forward movement 
itself. This is something which has, even yet, been barely 
attempted anywhere in the world. 

The Inner Development of Democracy. — The develop- 
ment of democracy involves the gradual unfolding of the 
political nature of the individual and his acceptance of the 
social and civic task as his own personal task. Aristotle 
had declared that "man is a political animal," meaning 
that man really finds his life only in real relationships 
with his fellows. But absolutism, as we have seen, denied 
to men the chance to share in civic interests, thus depriving 
them of the means of developing their political natures. 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION 213 

Religious institutions supported political absolutism in this 
denial. It is too long a story to tell at this time — how 
men have in a measure won their political freedom, i.e., the 
chance to develop their inner and civic natures. One illus- 
tration of how bitterly the conflict was waged, how real it 
was to the men of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, 
and nineteenth centuries, may be given here as we pass on. 
In this illustration from Holbach's "System of Nature," 
nature stands for the new tendencies toward democracy, 
religion for the absolutism of the Middle Ages : 

Nature bids man consult his reason, and take it for his guide; 
Rehgion teaches him that his reason is corrupted, that it is a 
faithless, truthless guide, implanted by a treacherous God to mis- 
lead his creatures. Nature tells man to seek light, to search for 
truth; Religion enjoins upon him to examine nothing, to remain 
in ignorance. Nature says to man : "Cherish glory, labor to win 
esteem, be active, courageous, industrious"; Religion says to him: 
"Be humble, abject, pusillanimous, live in retreat, busy thyself 
in prayer, meditation, devout rites, be useless to thyself and do 
nothing for others." Nature says to man: "Thou art free, and 
no power on earth can lawfully strip thee of thy rights" ; Religion 
cries to him that he is a slave condemned by God to groan under 
the rod of God's representatives. Let us recognize the plain 
truth, — that it is these supernatural ideas that have obscured 
morality, corrupted politics, hindered the advance of the sciences, 
and extinguished the happiness and peace even in the very heart 
of man. 

This quotation is not part of an academic exercise ; it is 
one little item in the long argument by which men con- 
vinced themselves that they were, and are, actually free. 

This doctrine of the gradual unfolding of the political 
nature of every normal individual finds its larger argument 
in the democratic theory of "the worth and dignity of 
every human being of moral capacity." This is the basis 



214 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

of the theory of self-government, the actual transference 
of the center of growth and authority to the masses, every 
member of which is to share in the responsibilities, in the 
goods, in the evils, in the knowledge, and in the whole 
meaning of the civic life. This will include, also, as we 
shall see in a later chapter, a just share in the economic 
goods. This is the modern ideal of social democracy, and 
therefore it ought to be, it must be, the aim of all makers 
of our civic life. 

The Democratic Ideal of Education. — The fuller state- 
ment of this will occupy us in Part V, but a brief discus- 
sion of the education needed in a modern social democracy 
is in place here. Democracy intends the actual release of 
all the energies of every individual for the enrichment of 
the personal and social life of all. Under Greek institu- 
tions the existence of slavery freed the few thousands of 
"citizens" for the development of the noblest and most 
intelligent life the world has ever known. The aristocratic 
social order of the Middle Ages released some few favored 
individuals for intelligence and service to the common 
good. But the essential inhumanity of both systems deter- 
mined the ultimate elimination of both. Democracy to- 
day implies the growth of a social order that shall fight to 
realize not some historical estimate of human good, but the 
intelligent, the reasoned, the scientific estimates and calcu- 
lations of goods that are good for all in ever-widening in- 
clusiveness. 

To be sure, there are many obstacles in the way of the 
realization of this ideal. Among these is the imperfection 
of our sciences of human good, as yet. Moreover, old aris- 
tocratic attitudes, implying that the good of the few in- 
sures the proper good of the many, do not readily give way 
to democratic demands. Inherited differences of "class" 
and wealth; natural differences in physical and mental 



POLITICAL REVOLUTION 215 

equipment, interpreted as proving the existence of a "nat- 
ural aristocracy"; and primitive traits of human nature 
which are excused by being classed under such terms as 
"ambition," "success," "self-made men," and the like, tend 
to blind men to the real significance of the problem. The 
actual realization of democracy must wait for the fuller 
understanding of what democracy really is in its social and 
psychological aspects. The educational program of democ- 
racy depends upon this same more complete development, 
with the definition of the educational problem. At present 
we are largely satisfied with the fact of "universal compul- 
sory school attendance"; we have scarcely begun to realize 
what democracy must do to make sure its own ideals are 
taking the place of the antiquated ideals of the autocratic 
ages. 

The average man has but a pitiful share in the culture 
that the schools are supposed to offer. Even the graduates 
of our universities have scarcely touched the deeper cur- 
rents of the world's moral and spiritual aspirations, by 
means of which, through thousands of years of brutal sup- 
pression, the masses of men have kept alive their funda- 
mental spiritual impulses. "Education" rarely touches 
this inner life, though occasionally the rare teacher comes 
upon it. Yet democracy is to rise out of the culture of this 
inner life of humanity, not out of the repetition of the stale 
externalities of the ages. Without the culture of these 
fundamental impulses of man's inner life there can be no 
hope for a democratic social order. 

Occasionally a prophet of the Christian religion catches 
a glimpse of this same inner life of the spirit and renews 
faith in the earth. But that is rather rare. Christianity 
has been taught among men for near two thousand years, 
yet somehow its inner meaning has not yet taken deep hold 
upon human life, its teachings have not become the world 's 



216 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

real convictions. Our noblest human impulses are not al- 
ways accepted by its representatives as worthy of trust; 
our human social order is not accepted as the task of its 
transforming mission; and our human hunger for a life in 
which instinct and emotion shall become one with moral 
ideal and religious passion is looked upon as of the evil. 
Christianity became profoundly disconnected from life in 
its medieval period, and it has not yet recovered from that 
deadening experience. It is still too much an official re- 
ligion, conserved in formal institutions and handed down 
to the needy world from an other-worldly source. It is 
still too much afraid of science, afraid of humanity, afraid 
of the democratic aspirations of the age ! 

The larger need of our democracy in this world-crisis is 
found in the widening of its program to include all aspects 
of our living, — industrial, social, moral, educational, and 
religious; in the conviction that such a widening of life is 
desirable and that the task of our political organization is 
to assure us its realization. This will involve a new ex- 
pression of the old passion for freedom, since it seems 
certain that these larger democratic aspirations can be 
achieved only through the continuance of the same actual, 
desperate, tragic, emotional, and intellectual struggles as 
those which have marked the most earnest periods of the 
past four centuries. Democracy is not a system that can 
be set up and left to run its own course. Eternal vigi- 
lance is the price of democracy. But vigilance of this sort 
depends upon a disciplined mental life. Now discipline 
may kill mental life and initiative ; it has practically always 
done this under any form of autocratic control. But dis- 
cipline may also fit the mind for the widest initiative and 
for the most complete inventiveness ; this is the sort of dis- 
cipline democracy demands. Therefore the education de- 
manded by a democratic social order must be completely 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 217 

liberating in all its effects. Its materials, its institutional 
controls, its methods, its administrative attitudes, its im- 
plicit psychology — these must all be of the democratic 
spirit. And our democratic ideals of government must be 
broadened until they can permit such a development of 
our educational efforts. For the chief obstacle to-day to 
the growth of our democracy is the undemocratic character 
of most of our education. If the world is ever to be "made 
safe for democracy," that process must penetrate into the 
very fiber of our educational procedure. 

D. ECONOMIC REBIRTH: THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 

We have seen how industry was carried on and the eco- 
nomic necessities of men were met in the life of primitive 
peoples. We have come upon social conditions within 
which hard and fast lines have been drawn between the 
working groups and the leisure classes; we have, indeed, 
seen some of those conditions developing. We have seen 
that such distinctions seemed to be an essential part of the 
organization of life in the Middle Ages, that period of 
fixed orders in all lines of human relationship. We have 
noted the "medieval dilemma" — the difficulty of a life that 
rather despised the physical means of living through its 
extreme interest in the means of higher living, yet, being 
compelled to use those physical means, must do penance to 
escape from the penalties incurred by such use. 

We have seen the miseries of the poor in the Middle Ages, 
miseries mitigated by the glories of the great and the hope 
of heaven. But we have also seen how the rise of cities 
made room for the gradual growth of a great middle class 
of freemen, neither serfs nor aristocrats, with whom intelli- 
gence might find a home, and who should become the leaders 
in gilds of free workers and the hope of the development of 
free institutions generally. 



218 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Intermediate Stages. — It is a long story from the dis- 
iutegration of the feudal system of industry to the modern 
system, far too long to be undertaken here. It leads 
through the growth of bodies of freed laborers in towns 
and cities, with their developments of gilds and their sys- 
tems of apprenticeship ; the gradual development of systems 
of handicrafts, carried on in simple fashion by groups of 
workers in more or less isolated localities and with the use 
of rather simple tools; the slow growth of the power of 
control over new sources of energy, such as water-power 
which could be turned to use, thus facilitating production ; 
until finally we come to the dawn of the era of invention, 
with its wonderful steam-engine and its ever more com- 
plete elaboration of tools, with its eventual expansion into 
the age of machinery which brings about the real industrial 
revolution. 

All through this modern period there had been a consid- 
erable increase of capital ; that is to say, social productivity 
was developing more rapidly and a larger available surplus 
was in existence. The rise of international commerce, with 
the larger exploration of the world; the discovery of gold 
and silver mines in America ; the draining off of all surplus 
productivity to the centers of business exploitation — all 
these factors contributed to the development of two "free" 
classes to take the place of the unfree classes of the Middle 
Ages. In place of the aristocrats of the earlier period, we 
now have the capitalist; in place of the serf, we have the 
wage-earners, soon to be lumped in the mass under the gen- 
eral term of "proletariat." Capitalism is a long growth, 
and it has its full development only after the industrial 
revolution. 

The Industrial Revolution. — "The labor of the peasant 
was incessant; his food, his clothing, and his habitation 
were of the rudest and the poorest. He was ignorant and 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 219 

superstitious, and his oppression made him sullen. He was 
the butt for the wit of the noble classes and the courtly 
poets, and the name "villain" (villein) has been handed 
down by them to us as the sjnionym for all that is base. ' ' ^ 

Under the gild system of industry all journeymen nat- 
urally looked forward to the time when they should become 
masters. But as the modern employer came into existence, 
the medieval journeyman ceased to exist, and in his place 
came the modern workingman, or at least his forerunner. 
These workingmen were shut out from the gilds of the 
employers; they thereupon began to form gilds of their 
own, which were the antecedents of modern trade-unions. 
"From that time onward, capitalists and laborers are sep- 
arated, and the history of labor ceases to be the history of 
capital." ^ 

But these earlier trade-gilds are not the historical fore- 
bears of modern trade-unions. Those earlier unions all 
disappeared in the social developments by which larger- 
scale industries came into being and in the midst of which 
all the old gild regulations were broken down, so that the 
employer was free to hire whom he could at such wages as 
he must, and the employee was free to sell his labor-power 
where he could at such wages as he could command. The 
age of free contract brought an end to all artificial regula- 
tions of labor and wages. "Human labor became a com- 
modity the value of which is fixed by the same laws as gov- 
ern the value of any other merchandise. ' ' ^ 

The development of machinery as the actual means of 
productivity tremendously stimulated this movement to- 
ward free contract. The steam-engine made manufactur- 
ing independent of natural conditions, such as rivers, water- 

1 Harding: "Essentials in Medieval and Modern History," p- 179. 
2GedG: "Principles of Political Economy" (second American edi- 
tion) ; p. 409. 

3Gede: op. cit.; p. 491. 



220 DEMOCEACY IN EDUCATION 

falls, etc., in large measure. Machinery called for large 
numbers of laborers, only partially skilled at the best, in 
the growing manufacturing cities. This development of 
machine-industry has been responsible for many aspects of 
the wonderful expansion of the nineteenth century. In- 
deed, the present industrial situation may be set down to 
this revolution in industrial methods. 

But even so, the whole tendency was not a natural de- 
velopment. In the early decades of the age of the indus- 
trial revolution, particularly in the closing decades of the 
eighteenth century, England was very forehanded in aiding 
the employer to maintain his death-grip upon the laboring 
classes by passing very stringent regulations against com- 
binations of laborers, making, for example, any combina- 
tion of laborers for the purpose of asking for an increase 
in wages a criminal conspiracy punishable by transporta- 
tion beyond the seas. Many an honest but starving Eng- 
lish workingman paid for his temerity in asking for a liv- 
ing wage by working in the quarries of Australia for the 
rest of his life. 

The Industrial Problem in a Democracy. — Perhaps the 
most distressing period in the history of human labor is 
that period from the close of the eighteenth century to the 
middle of the nineteenth, when men were still bound by the 
old legislative regulations and society was bound by the 
laissez faire conception, and before the revolt of the mod- 
ern democratic movement in industry had begun. Wage- 
slavery was a real condition in those days not alone for 
men, but for multitudes of women and children as well.^ 

But since the middle of the nineteenth century wonderful 
changes for the better have been made. The old obstruct- 
ive laws have been gradually broken down. Workingmen 
have fought during half a century for the right to organize 

1 Cf. Mrs. Browning's poem, "The Cry of the Children." 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 221 

for the common protection of their standards of living and 
for the raising- of those standards by all constructive means, 
such as education. The right to organize has been won in 
all intelligent communities and has been recognized in in- 
telligent legislation. To be sure, here and there a voice 
may be heard denying this right; but such voices are 
anachronistic. The sober common sense of the modern 
community accepts the labor-union as normal and proper. 

Not only so, but in practically all modern commonwealths 
distinctive legislation in the direction of protecting the 
standards of living, the health of the laborers, the moral 
quality of the industrial situation, and many other aspects 
of the economic system, has been enacted. Childhood is 
slowly becoming too precious to be exploited. Women are 
no longer, in most cases, permitted to be pitted against a 
soulless machine for the mere chance to earn a livelihood. 
Men are protected from the ravages of machines and from 
industrial diseases and overstrains. Humanity is begin- 
ning to be regarded as of more worth than mere profits.^ 

To be sure, a leisure class persists outside the tides of 
productive industry. Humanity is not yet entirely ra- 
tional. The tasks of education are not all complete. In- 
telligence has not yet found its way to the heart of the 
industrial problem. Old brute forces still persist in some 
measure. The school is far isolated from industry. Edu- 
cation does not make organic connection with the whole 
life of the community. Industry does not play fully into 
and criticize our educational systems. Apprenticeship 
systems of education have gone; the machine has no place 

1 Recent American legislation (the so-called "Clayton Act") has 
officially declared that human labor is not to be regarded as a 
commodity, to be bought and sold in the open market. Instead, 
the basis of wages must be found in the maintenance of a genuine 
standard of living. The old doctrine of the immutability of economic 
laws has gone from the enlightened part of the community. 



222 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

for them. Education, losing contact with industry, be- 
comes bookish, remote, lifeless. Industry, losing the quick- 
ening touch of intelligence, becomes still more mechanical, 
inhuman. 

We are in the midst of the process of making industry 
completely democratic by making its processes completely 
intelligent and its modes of organization completely 
human. Nothing short of this will suffice. Industry must 
become the servant of the human need. Neither machinery 
nor profit may be permitted to stand in the way of human 
living, and education must have a large share in bringing 
about this desirable result. Future developments in eco- 
nomic directions are altogether problematic. But it is cer- 
tain that the bald assertion of the doctrine of ''economic 
determinism" no longer carries conviction to intelligent 
members of the democratic commonwealth. Men and 
women and children are not condemned by immutable law 
to the degradations of poverty, but by mutable ignorance 
and the sheer survival of old and base forms of industrial 
organization. In our discussion of the intellectual revolu- 
tion, we concluded that it is the task of science to work 
out the conditions under which a good life is possible. 
That task includes the economic problem. Modern social 
intelligence is engaged in that task. The destruction of 
old conventions by the pressures of war-operations fur- 
thers this phase of the task. Men must be economically 
free, else political democracy hides under a fine name a 
ghastly jest. Democratic education must work at this 
task. The hopes of our political democracy must become 
the possession of us all. The promises of our intellectual 
revolution must be made available to all. The larger 
liberties of the religious revolution must come to all. But 
beyond all these things, and giving substance and body 
to these fine ideals, the actualities of economic liberty must 



THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 223 

be realized by all. For these reasons, the modern age has 
determined that all men shall have a chance to know the 
truth, — not the medieval truth that the afflictions of this 
world will be recompensed in Heaven, but the scientific 
truth that there is no reason (save our carelessness and 
unintelligence) why any one should be deprived of the 
real goods of life. The world may move slowly toward 
this goal of truth and intelligent organization. Education 
may be long on the way. But the approach to the goal is 
certain. Democracy demands it, and science is learning 
the way. 



CHAPTER XXII 

A SUMMARY: THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE MODERN 

WORLD 

The history of the four or five centuries of the modern 
era has been wrought out of continuous struggle along 
many lines, as we have seen; the four or five lines which 
we have specifically noted do not exhaust the subject. 
The fight to win freedom from the folkways of the Middle 
Ages has developed particular and peculiar features in 
connection with every aspect of human nature; but we 
may not take more time for specific surveys. We must 
here sum up and present in a general way the character- 
istics of these struggles and the nature of the modern 
world-spirit, for this spirit is the social motive that makes 
intelligible the history of education in this same period. 

Relation of the Modern World to Medievalism. — Medi- 
evalism represents one of the two fundamental modes of 
interpreting the world and human experience. As such, 
it is probably the most complete expression possible to the 
human mind. It is an effort to establish a world-folkway 
within which all questions shall find authoritative answer, 
all impulses be put to rest, and all originality be turned to 
the strengthening of the structure itself. It must be 
again confessed that great numbers of human beings, at 
least under historical and present social and educational 
conditions, find satisfying refuge in some such sort of folk- 
way retreat, refusing to battle with the conditions of liv- 
ing, declining to struggle with the problems of the world, 
permitting destiny to work its will with them. Politicians 

224 



CHARACTER OF THE MODERN WORLD 225 

and political conditions irritate them, and they are glad 
to escape from political responsibilities; religious teachers 
lull them to repose, and the ecclesiastical institutions take 
care of their spiritual interests and their eternal destinies; 
captains of industry pay them fixed wages, and the eco- 
nomic struggle does not concern them ; all the proper ques- 
tions of the universe have been given final answers in the 
Bible or church doctrines, and science is weariness and 
vexation of spirit; and the teachers they respect convey 
to them absolute knowledges, which completely destroy 
any possible initiative that they may once have had. 
Medievalism was not, and is not, primarily, a system of 
politics, religion, industry, and education; it is not fair, it 
obscures the truth we need to face, to identify medievalism 
with any historic system. Medievalism was, and is, an 
attitude of mind, a mode of interpreting experience, a sys- 
tem of logic, an inner construction of experience which may 
or may not develop a corresponding construction in the 
world of institutions. But just as long as any individual 
permits another individual or institution to endow him 
with his civic, economic, religious, or intellectual possessions, 
and thus to control his life and destiny, medievalism will 
continue to exist. Medievalism is life reduced to habit, con- 
trolled by custom, surrounded by authoritative tradition 
from which intellectual control has abdicated. Its answers 
and its activities must all be of a fixed and final type, so that 
life may be secure and without disturbance. 

Anselm presents the extreme intellectual form of this 
attitude in his famous maxim, "Credo ut intellegam," which 
may be interpreted, "I bring my reason under subjection 
to the authorized world-system, since in that way alone can 
I have an orderly world of knowledge, even though that or- 
derly world is the construction of another mind." But 
in the same way, though of course not so obviously, the same 



226 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ideal is expressed in economic terms : * ' I gladly submit to 
the social order, since in that way alone may I have a 
share in the world's wealth, even if that share be no more 
than a chance to work for some one else. ' ' A definite civic 
attitude seems also present: "I submit to the organized 
authority, because in that way alone may I find a place in 
the social world, for the position of even a serf is better 
than to be an outcast." And finally the religious ideal 
stands out vividly: "I conform to the doctrines, since in 
that way alone I shall become joint-heir to the treasures 
laid up for those who are faithful." That is to say, all 
medieval institutions existed in the truth of the dogma of 
Aquinas : ' ' Real existence is not in individual being, but in 
membership in an eternal Whole." And this is, of course, 
of the essence of the folkways. 

Now it is easily seen that the modern world must fight 
consistently against such a final construction of the world, 
if it is to win to its avowed ideals. There is an insidious 
danger here. Every forward movement holds within itself 
the possibility of giving over its active career and of settling 
down into its final forms, i.e., developing its own folkways, 
its own "Middle Age," and thus ceasing to care for further 
movement. Indeed, any movement is capable of becoming 
so completely satisfied with its own attainments and so fixed 
in its own accomplishments as to identify those accomplish- 
ments vrith the universe itself, even denying the existence of 
anything beyond its own perceptions and setting up its own 
standards of orthodoxy which make its old professions of 
progress seem like the ravings of lunacy. Many modem 
religious denominations are excellent examples of this fact. 

But the modern world has committed itself to the cause 
of democracy, science, religious freedom, and industrial op- 
portunity. Eternal vigilance is the price of any one of 
these, or all of them put together. There is no escape from 



CHARACTER OF THE MODERN WORLD 227 

this vigilance, save in surrendering to the past; and that 
means giving over all that has been gained and denying the 
reality of the experiences of the modern world, whether in 
social or individual living. This would be the ending of 
all human hopes. However difficult and uncertain the 
way, the modern age is true to its inner self in one respect : 
it has put its hand to the plow and will not turn back! 

The Ideals of the Modern World.— But the fact that the 
modern world must fight the essential spirit of the Middle 
Ages does not mean that medievalism has no value or signifi- 
cance. As a matter of fact, of course, the past has profound 
significance for the present and the future. This new age 
is like the Teutonic barbarian of a thousand years ago ; 
nay, it is that Teutonic barbarian, now no longer a simple 
child of the forest, "fresh blood and youthful mind," but 
strong manhood and disciplined mind, with surplus energies 
released in Renaissance and Reformation and revolution, 
ready to destroy or construct, to build or tear down, as his 
mind may be turned. These new energies need further 
discipline not for their uprooting, but for their deeper 
strengthening, in order that they may learn how to turn 
their strength effectively upon that aspect of the great 
world-task most needing to be done. And these old folk- 
ways of medievalism, formed through the long centuries 
and firmly rooted in the lasting affections of men, should 
be just the instruments of this needed discipline of these 
new energies for the long tasks of the growing future — 
the digging out of the unsuspected resources of the world, 
the gathering of the materials of the new and larger intel- 
lectual and moral existence of the race, the combining these 
materials organically in the new and better social and in- 
dustrial orders, and the realizing and expressing more fully 
the unbounded hopes of men. 

To be sure, this very process of disciplining these new 



228 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

energies of life would have meant the transformation of the 
medieval folkways. This process would have brought to 
the peoples new meanings for life, criticized away their 
stagnate attitudes, and given them the ideals of the modern 
world, the hope of progress, and the spirit of science. That 
would have meant the virtual destruction of the folkways ! 
Yes, but each age must build its own universe. The trouble 
is that each age insists upon bequeathing its own structure, 
unchanged, to the next generation. As if any child can 
gratefully accept or gladly wear the old clothes of its ances- 
tors ! The earlier age ought to use up the materials of its 
own structures in giving its children practice in building, so 
that they, trained to the task, may in their own good time 
make the kind of life-structure that their own needs and 
ideals demand. 

In some respects the revolt against medievalism, — that 
fixed and permanent way of looking at life, social order, 
human nature, education, and human destiny, — has been 
too wholly emotional, too unintelligent. After all, the un- 
derstructure of any life is habit. Psychologically, this 
must be so. Correlatively, the understructure of the 
world's life must be custom and tradition. The accomplish- 
ments of the world to the time of Thomas Aquinas were too 
great to be lightly considered or thrown away. These ac- 
complishments are conserved in that great body of habit, 
custom, and institution which is still in almost undisputed 
possession of great areas of society. The real genius of 
the modern world is not expressed in wholesale condemna- 
tions of the past; nor, indeed, in wholesale acceptation of 
that same past. If the modern age has anything to com- 
mend it above the medieval age, it is found in its method 
of actual analysis of problems, including historical situa- 
tions. It is characteristic of half-intelligent logic that it 
insists upon clearly distinguishing institutions and atti- 



CHARACTER OF THE MODERN WORLD 229 

tudes which are not clearly distinguishable. Inductive sci- 
ence is not to be set over against deductive knowledge, as if 
the two were hostile. The former includes the latter, and 
there can be no true induction without adequate and proper 
use of the deductive methods. So, also, the modern age is 
not set over against the Middle Ages in absolute contrast. 
Rather, the modern period includes the essential values of 
the Middle Ages, using those values, building upon them, 
and conserving them almost as carefully as does the medie- 
val spirit itself. 

But the modern age goes beyond the medieval age in 
certain very important particulars. Holding to the values 
of the past for critical and constructive purposes, the mod- 
ern world insists that the inner forces of growth and life 
can be trusted ; that, indeed, in sharp conflicts between the 
externalities of life and the inner forces of growth, the 
latter at times must win, if life is to be preserved. For 
this reason the modern world has set fortli for itself certain 
great, though indefinite, goals, and has developed for itself 
certain constructive, though largely intangible, ideals. Over 
against the distinctive medieval point of view, with its be- 
lief that a fixed order of knowledge and a fixed way of 
looking at life are necessary to education, we may state the 
informing spirit of the modern period in the following 
ways, all of which sum up the general doctrine of modern 
democracy and science that the inner forces of life and ex- 
perience can be trusted : 

(a) Psychologically. Impulses and feelings and the sci- 
ence that grows out of human living are closer to reality 
than are the old intelleetualisms, knowledges, and fixed 
modes of thought. This is the real basis of modern science, 
and it is the foundation of the modern hope in democracy. 

(b) Sociologically. Men may be trusted to renew their 
institutions in the event of the downfall of any old institu- 



230 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

tion, since "man is a political animal," as Aristotle pointed 
out. Ordinarily this is thought to mean that man must 
be closely surrounded by authoritative controls. But con- 
trary to this ordinary interpretation of that Aristotelian 
principle, the modern world takes it for granted that insti- 
tutions, including the remaking of institutions, are safe in 
the hands of men. Men need institutions, and whenever 
they destroy those they have, they will at once build others. 

(c) Politically. Normal human relationships are safer 
foundations for the building of the state than are either the 
traditional political formulations or the doctrines of a 
supernatural order of society. Men, in their stumblings 
after order, may make grave mistakes ; but they will prob- 
ably produce no such fundamental perversions of human 
life as have developed under old supernatural sanctions. 
The good state will be, in the long run, the product of 
man's bravest intelligence at work in the service of his fin- 
est ideals. 

(d) Industrially. Work is a necessity of life, not merely 
of the economic life but of the moral life as well ; and men 
can be depended upon to share the life of work just in as 
far as their energies are free to follow natural channels 
and their training has not perverted their natural activi- 
ties. The good workmen make a good social order. 

(e) Religiously. The good that men achieve is their 
own good, — not the good that is given them by some insti- 
tution. Institutions are the tools of humanity, not the 
final dwelling for men. Good men make the various social 
institutions worth while; and all institutions may rightly 
be called in question, may rightly be asked to answer at 
the bar of the individual conscience. Human life is a give 
and take between institutions and individuals, not a mere 
give on the part of institutions and a mere take on the 
part of men. 



CHARACTER OF THE MODERN WORLD 231 

It may be objected that no such sharp contrast between 
the medieval and the modern is quite fair; and that objec- 
tion may be true of the conditions of common life. But it 
may still be true that the ideals of the two periods, despite 
lack of clear distinction on our part, are still definitely an- 
tagonistic, if we take them apart and view them as fixed 
ideals of life. If it will not seem to be too redundant, the 
whole matter may be stated from still another point of 
view. The modern age, in its almost complete reaction from 
the medieval system, wants complete democracy; which 
means, among other things, that there shall be no inside 
cliques, whether in politics, economics, religion, or educa- 
tion. The freedom of truth, the breadth of science, the 
universality of art, all those somewhat elusive hopes which 
can be kept only by the exercise of eternal vigilance and 
whose function it is to break down all artificial distinctions 
and to release us from those primitive isolations in our own 
routine and folkway worlds which keep us from the realiza- 
tion of our essential humanity — these are in the spirit of 
the modern world! 

In the efforts to work out these ideals and to realize them 
through the modern period there have been many excesses, 
extravagances, and recantations, bringing much suffering 
and showing humanity in the depths of tragic weakness. 
But through all these experiences, whether of littleness or 
of greatness, there has been a gradual exploration of the 
world of men, of human life and of human nature. Men 
have learned by their mistakes in the modern world as 
never before; and the more we explore human nature, the 
more we make use of mistakes as means of learning. But 
men have learned by their successes, too. Little by little 
progress is made. But even yet man has not learned the 
complete method of his own experience. Hence all too 
often intelligence still follows experience. Still, as in the 



232 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

primitive world, intelligence may be after the event. 
Of course the past is actively obstructive in the present. 
Institutions, attitudes of mind, systems, ideals inherited 
from the past — all tend to obstruct the fulfilment of the 
present. But this is not all to be counted as lost. The san- 
est intelligence of the modern world has seen rather clearly 
that life must be rooted deep in primitive instinct and im- 
pulse, developed through long practice, schooled in the dis- 
ciplines of real experience, fed by all the streams that flow 
from all the ancient hills, as well as stimulated by the stir- 
ring conditions of the present. It takes all ages to make the 
modern age. The task of education in such an age is, how- 
ever, nothing less than appalling. Its long analysis shall 
concern us in the remainder of this study. 



PART V 

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION IN THE MODERN 

PERIOD 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE ELEMENTS WITH WHICH MODERN EDUCATION HAS HAD 

TO WORK 

The general problem of education in the modern period 
may be briefly stated somewhat as follows : How shall the 
elusive energies and enthusiasms released in the Renais- 
sance, the Reformation, and the revolutions of the modern 
centuries be conserved and used in developing a new social 
order, while at the same time the tremendous values of the 
older organization of society are saved? Can a modern, 
progressive, educational program, involving theory, con- 
tent, and practice, be developed, a program which will be 
in harmony with this new spirit of free religion, democ- 
racy in political and industrial life, and science, thus tak- 
ing the place of the medieval, static, and mechanical educa- 
tional program which embodied and inculcated the spirit 
of authority in religion, aristocracy in political and indus- 
trial organization, and dogmatism in the field of knowledge ? 
To be sure, these questions do not fully appear in the early 
part of the modern period; they are discovered as the age 
goes on. Modern education has not always been self-con- 
scious ; it has not fully known what it was trying to do at all 
times; it has been struggling in the midst of tremendous 
complications, trying to find a secure footing from which 
to survey the situation. These struggles have not been 
academic; they have been most real, for they involve the 
whole destiny of civilization. Will civilization, i.e., the 
mere onward moving of historic events, overwhelm intelli- 

235 



236 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

gence and escape again into the chaos of the early Middle 
Ages? Or will intelligence be able to rise to the high de- 
mands of the times and find an ordered way through the 
wilderness of the modern age? Intelligence is at work in 
the broad fields of scientific investigation. Shall the results 
achieved by scientific intelligence be lost to the uses of life? 
Or shall other intelligence, appreciating the meaning of 
science, make sure that each new generation shall share in 
the larger results and meet life on the advancing frontiers? 

Elements with Which Modern Education Has Had to 
Reckon. — Modern educational effort, both theoretical and 
practical, has had to reckon with two distinctive types of 
educational elements. We must see these types in some 
clearness if we are to appreciate, and so share in, the actual 
struggle by which the modern period has won to its "pres- 
ent precarious position." These two types can best be de- 
scribed as the deductive and the inductive. 

The deductive elements may be summed up as follows: 
The traditions, customs, and habits — the "folkways" of the 
past — which are still effective long after they may seem to 
have been broken down; the institutions of the Middle 
Ages which still exist in many regions untouched by the 
modern movement and in all lands are still influential; 
fixed methods of industry ; manners of the common life and 
prejudices of all classes of people, these being more effective 
in control than reason ; the definite philosophy of a created 
and completed world within which all change, if there is 
any such thing, must still go on ; fixed systems of knowl- 
edge, dominated by Aristotle's logic, to which all new 
knowledge must conform ; traditional representations of 
psychology which had made no real progress since the time 
of the Greeks and which supposed that the mind was 
molded by the objects it considered; in short, the general 
spirit of a fixed universe, created, complete, and logically 



ELEMENTS IN MODERN EDUCATION 237 

and psychologically finished, which the mind for its own 
salvation must learn, and to which in learning it must con- 
form and submit. 

The inductive elements may be summed up as follows: 
The impulses, energies, and enthusiasms released in the 
whole modern movement — the new humanity, the new an- 
tiquity, and the new world of physical nature; the spirit 
and hope of a progressive realization of these finer ideals; 
the new treasures of knowledge in all the wide-reaching 
ranges of exploration and investigation with telescope and 
microscope and compass; the new worlds of thought and 
action which offer new outlets to pent-up impulses and 
burdened populations; the expectation of the unknown in 
the geographical, astronomical, physical, biological, and 
social aspects of the world. 

'T is time 
New hopes should animate the world, new light 
Should dawn from new revealings to a race 
Weighed down so long, forgotten so long . . .^ 

Growing out of these new elements of life there was even 
an overconfidence that the new age was to come by quick, 
sure means to the very heart of the secret of all existence. 
"Paracelsus is the type of a host of men who sprang up 
all over Europe, men of original and high ideals, but men 
whose undisciplined imaginations led them beyond the 
bounds of sober thinking." - 

Elements which were Lacking in the Beginnings of the 
Modern Period. — Looking back upon the beginnings of the 
modern age after four hundred years of struggle and effort, 
still aware of "the little done, the undone vast," realizing 
the imperfection of the tools and methods with which the 
age began its long and arduous toils, the wonder grows how 

1 Browning's "Paracelsus." 

2 Rogers: "Student's History of Philosophy," p. 231. 



238 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

men could ever have been brave enough to begin a task of 
such stupendous labor. Doubtless few appreciated the 
magnitude of the task that they were undertaking. Doubt- 
less the hope, not absent anywhere, that some "secret," 
some "philosopher's stone," would be found by which the 
base substances of life could be quickly changed to social 
"gold" helped to inspire and stimulate the work. But it is 
well for us to take account of the actual lacks in the way 
of scientific methods and tools of precision with which that 
work was begun, as compared with the methods and tools 
with which similar work goes on to-day, remembering that 
the work of making and refining our tools still goes on. 

What did the early modern period need in the way of 
tools? What must those ideals, energies, and enthusiasms 
for progress have that the Middle Ages did not have, in 
order that they might be assured permanent opportunity 
of development and growth ? Here are some of the items : 

(a) A more progressive logic than that which Aristotle 
gave to the Middle Ages ; a logic of movement, growth, and 
development, to take the place of the logic of fixed condi- 
tions, perfection, and exclusion. Bacon undertook to fur- 
nish this new logic, this Novum Organum; but for four 
hundred years men have worked, at first fitfully and later 
more seriously, at the task of perfecting this new instru- 
ment, and the task is still unfinished. 

(b) A more faithful account of the nature of human 
understanding and human nature in general ; that is to say, 
a psychology which shall be true to the new elements of 
human nature that have come to light in this new age. 
The psychology of the Middle Ages was primitive and in- 
tellectualistic, but it served fairly well the purposes of the 
scholastics and the needs of a fixed, folkway world. But 
the new age, with its new interests and its new explorations 
of human nature, must soon find a new psychology, or come 



ELEMENTS IN MODERN EDUCATION 239 

to the end of its explorations and give over its interests. 
Education is profoundly concerned with this development, 
as we shall see. Descartes (1596-1650) may be regarded as 
the actual leader in this constructive movement; but for 
three hundred years men have been working at this task, 
and the work must go on for other centuries. 

(c) A more thorough investigation of the nature of hu- 
man society, its origin and its modes of combination, de- 
velopment, and control. The Middle Ages implicitly held 
that society existed only when held together within institu- 
tional bonds. This made of men mere puppets to be man- 
ipulated and controlled by the authorized heads of institu- 
tions. Its outcome was the feudal, aristocratic, and stag- 
nate social order of the age. But the new age has dem- 
ocratic aspirations. Can a democracy be organized out 
of puppets? Education must become distinctly aware of 
this problem, for our modern world has been hindered 
in its democratic aspirations by the existence of an educa- 
tion which in theory and practice retains the social concep- 
tions of the Middle Ages. 

(d) A more fundamental theory of the origin and nature 
of the universe. The Middle Ages believed that the world 
had been created, and that it had been pronounced "very 
good." But the new age was feeling the impulse of the 
incomplete, the unfinished, with work still left to do. Can 
progress and movement exist in a finished universe? But 
does this brave new age dare to accept the theory that the 
universe is unfinished, still in movement, evolving out of one 
condition into another? Well, not for several hundred 
years, at any rate. But the seed of the doctrine is in the 
soil, and at length it will grow and break through. 

(e) A complete new conception of the nature of the 
process of education. In a preexistent, Platonic universe, 
with all knowledge already in existence, education must 



240 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

consist in the simple process of learning (usually this 
means committing to memory) the facts., The Middle Ages 
carried on the formal education in this way: teachers pro- 
nounced the sentences, and the pupils took them down and 
learned them. But in a moving universe where knowledge 
is still in process of coming to be ; where impulses and en- 
thusiasms and energies and ideals and purposes that have 
received no fixed status as yet, exist ; where new humanities 
and antiquities and worlds of nature are discovered ; where 
new logics and psychologies and sociologies and philoso- 
phies are coming into being, — shall educational processes 
remain stagnate, stationary? Shall the formal, pedantic, 
and barren intellectualisms of the old social order suffice for 
this new world of struggle and effort after something bet- 
ter? Shall education linger far in the rear of the world's 
progress, or shall it keep step, keep time, keep spirit with 
the new? Little by little the world becomes aware of the 
fact that democracy itself can never win to a secure posi- 
tion in the actualities of the world so long as our educa- 
tional conditions, our theories, our practices, and our ad- 
ministrative controls of education remain autocratic. 

Briefly, we may sum up the problems of the modern 
world-period by suggesting that progress in the realization 
of these great democratic ideals will depend upon the work- 
ing out of the more perfect tools of science ; a logic that is 
able to escape from scholastic presuppositions into the actual 
freedom of intellectual adventure; a scientific method of 
the same general sort, with the acjdition that as the cen- 
turies go by ever finer modes of control will be developed, 
including the laboratory method ; a theory of experience 
that will lend itself to a more faithful psychology; a less 
mystical conception of the nature of knowledge and a will- 
ingness to make use of knowledge in the reorganization of 
the conditions of living ; a natural theory of the origins and 



ELEMENTS IN MODERN EDUCATION 241 

relationships of society ; and a much more intelligent ap- 
preciation of the processes of experience which are involved 
in education. The nature of the universe, of society, of 
human nature, of the human mind, of the processes of 
knowledge, of the processes of education — these are all to be 
investigated and new theories concerning all of them are 
to grow up. The modern period does not merely develop 
more things; it is a different kind of a world, and it looks 
at all things in a different sort of way. 

The task of education, therefore, will be seen to be a very 
different sort of task. The fatal defect in much of our 
modern education is that it does not know we live in this 
different sort of world. To all too great an extent educa- 
tional procedure goes on in the spirit of the Middle Ages, 
or some Protestant restatement of the Middle Ages, without 
reference to the modern background. We must come to see 
our modern educational tasks against the background of 
these modern world-movements in science, democracy, and 
the love of freedom. Undoubtedly these are revolutionary 
movements; they are so presented herein. We live just 
now in a world of revolutions. But there is need of edu- 
cation in such a world, in order that the revolutionary 
spirit may be drained off into the spirit of a progressive 
evolution. Modern education, in schools and elsewhere, 
must be made to be a conscious effort to realize in the actual 
life of childhood and growing youth the rich results and the 
mighty spirit of the modern world of science and democ- 
racy. 

What has been done along this line in modern centuries? 
What still remains to be done? To these aspects of our 
problem we must now turn. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE TRAGEDY OF HUMANISM IN THE POST -RENAISSANCE 
PERIOD 

With the substantial break in the structure of medieval- 
ism which came with the Renaissance came disillusionment 
as to the value and signihcance of the traditional education, 
— its aims, its materials, and its results. The question of 
method was scarcely raised as yet. But in the presence of 
the failure of this old social order and the disillusionment 
with reference to its educational system, which way can 
the world turn to find its new means of education ? 

Three Possible Outlets. — We have already seen that the 
new emotional experiences of the Renaissance opened out 
avenues of exploration in three new directions, viz., toward 
classical antiquity, toward the social world of the age, and 
toward the world of nature. Each of these avenues is 
eventually to become the line of a promising constructive 
activity; each of them is to become the basis of an educa- 
tional program which shall seek by extreme vociferation 
to monopolize the whole field of study. But for a time the 
last two are too dimly perceived to be seized upon. The 
Renaissance, as we have seen, devotes its whole energy to 
one great enterprise: it will become acquainted with that 
great past of beauty, poetry, and humanity which lies before 
the dreary ages of medievalism ; it will renew its youth at 
classic springs. 

What was Humanism? — Humanism was an appeal from 
the barren intellectualisms of the Middle Ages, which 
gained their hold upon men through professing the power 

242 



THE TRAGEDY OF HUMANISM 243 

of determining and controlling eternal destinies, to the 
richer life of the emotions, feelings, impulses, and social 
fellowships of the human world, especially to those noblest 
expressions of that rich life of emotions, feelings, impulses, 
and fellowships which is found in the classic literatures. 
The humanity of men came to a new birth in the Italian 
cities; it found its justification, its support, its criticism, 
and its fulfilment in the humanity of the old Greek world. 
It was fed upon the learning of the ancients ; it realized its 
own more complete development by that vitalizing touch 
and the complete absorption into the life of that older 
world, which was "perhaps the most completely human 
social order the world has ever seen," despite its defects and 
limitations. At its best, while the old, free, emotional 
spirit played through it, humanistic study and education 
did really reproduce something of the liberality of life and 
nature of the old Greek world. The Italian cities fostered 
the new spirit; the tyrants of the cities set up the new 
schools of humanistic learning, thereby making their own 
uncertain positions more secure. Especially was this the 
case at Milan, where the Visconti held power, and at Flor- 
ence, where the Medici ruled in royal state. 

The best type of these schools, perhaps, was that of Vit- 
torino de Feltre, which he established at Mantua about 1424. 
The humanist aim, as it appeared in this school, was the 
"harmonious development of the mind, the body, and the 
moral life, ' ' — that balance of all bodily and mental powers 
which should be the character of the free man, the human 
being, and which had expressed the Greek ideal of a liberal 
education. The life of action was included in this ideal; 
for the human was distinguished from the pedant in no 
respect more profoundly than in this, that he found the 
real test of life in action, rather than in mere intellection. 

Inevitable Tendencies. — But as we have seen, while this 



244 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

new age found new emotional outlets and new materials of 
great value, the question of the method of education was 
scarcely raised. As long as men felt the fresh glow of en- 
thusiasm for the beauty and poetry of the humanities, some- 
thing of the spirit of humanism pervaded the actual school 
and overflowed even into the very method of teaching. Vit- 
torino held himself to be " the father of his pupils, ' ' an atti- 
tude profoundly different from that of the intellectual task- 
masters of the medieval schools. But this attitude was an 
enthusiasm, a sentiment, growing out of his enthusiasms 
for the materials with which he was dealing. It was not, 
— in the state of psychology, it could not become, — a rea- 
soned program of teaching procedure ; but as a mere senti- 
ment it must gradually dissolve and disappear, if not in 
Vittorino himself, then in those who came after him. Not 
only was this so, but the whole humanistic movement was 
predominantly an emotion; and when it tried to state its 
aims and methods in intelligent terms, because it did not 
realize that a new outlook upon the world implies a new 
type of logic and psychology and because no such new type 
of logic or psychology was as yet in existence, humanism fell 
backward toward the formalism it professed to abhor. The 
implicit method of this humanistic education was still the 
method of medievalism; and in the absence of corrective 
intelligence our implicit methods of thinking will control 
and organize after their own fashion the most obdurate 
materials of thinking. The only possible chance for hu- 
manism to endure lay in its ability to develop a humanist 
logic with which to displace the machine-logic of Aristotle. 
This it could not do; hence it fell a victim to the very 
system it professed to despise. We must see how this 
happened. 

The Degeneration of Humanism. — The generous enthusi- 
asms and high emotions of the first generations of the new 



THE TRAGEDY OF HUMANISM 245 

age were the refined product of the purifying influences 
of these classic materials. "What was more natural than 
to assume that these classic materials could produce these 
nobler forms of living and thinking age upon age ? At any 
rate, such an argument arose and became the educational 
doctrine of the period in a dominating sort of way. And 
out of this doctrine, generation by generation, there flowed 
a stream of strange and unforeseen consequences. For the 
argument developed unexpected turns and windings, and 
it led to an outcome that would have been abhorrent to the 
spirit of its beginnings, if that outcome could have been 
foreseen. Let us follow the argument through its various 
stages. We may phrase it as if the spirit of these successive 
generations were voicing their several contributions to it: 

Contact with these classic materials has refined and 
purified these two or three generations of the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries; hence the same experience will 
refine and purify and exalt any generation. Let us there- 
fore make our whole education out of these classic ma- 
terials. Greek and Latin shall be the intellectual nourish- 
ment of all the coming generations ; thus shall we assure 
ourselves that all these coming generations shall have re- 
fined, purified, and ennobled characters not unlike our 
own.^ 

But the classic literatures are not easily accessible. We 
must study the language before we can reach the literature 
with its liberating content ; hence the curriculum must go 
back of the literature to the primary study of the lan- 
guages, not, of course, for the sake of the languages, but 
for the sake of getting at the content that is locked up in 
the languages. In the long run, of course, the study of 
these languages will lead us back to the literatures; and 

1 Cf . The Curriculum of Sturm's Gymnasium : "Monroe's Text 
Book," p. 391. 



246 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

then mastery of the literatures, made possible by the mas- 
tery of the languages, will unlock and unfold our own 
struggling impulses and originalities.^ 

Again : 

But the Greek and Latin languages are contained within 
the niceties of grammatical construction and idiomatic 
usage; grammar is the actual clue to the understanding 
and mastery of language. Hence our curriculum must be 
primarily made up of the study of grammar, not, it is 
obvious, for the sake of the grammar, but for the sake of 
the language, which is to be the key to the unlocking of 
that liberal content which is hidden in the literatures and 
which is to purify and ennoble our spirits, our struggling 
feelings, and emotions. In the long run the study of gram- 
mar will unlock and unfold the classic languages and give 
us free access to those classic literatures in which we shall 
find what our souls most need. 

Finally : 

But not all literature is of the finest form; not all lan- 
guage is of noblest mold; not all grammar is worthy of 
study. Even in these classic fields there are obvious grada- 
tions of values. Evidently it will be a waste of time, as 
well as a source of possible danger to our future characters, 
if we shall devote ourselves to these classic authors at 
random. Let us spend time on none but the highest and 
most worthy. Who is that highest and worthiest? Can 
there be doubt in that subject? Who, indeed, but Cicero, 
— Cicero, the incomparable orator, the admitted master of 
perfect Latin style ? Let us boldly adhere to him, the high- 
est. Let us ''discard all subjects that do not admit of be- 
ing discussed in Cicero's recorded words." 

So, by these stages of argument, we reach the anti-climax 
and the lowest levels of humanistic decadence ; we come to 

iCf. Roger Ascham, "The Scholemaster" (1570). 



THE TRAGEDY OF HUMANISM 247 

* * Ciceronianism. " This may seem like a caricature, but it 
is simple, sober, historic fact. We must study the perfect 
grammar of the noblest Latin as that appears in the writ- 
ings of Cicero ; this will bring us to the perfect language of 
the classics, by means of which we shall be able to read the 
liberalizing literatures of the ancient humanities, by means 
of which our needy souls may be refined and purified. The 
educational doctrine underlying this decadent movement is 
to be stated in some such way as this : ' ' Since all the great 
spirits of the ages have passed away, the hope of the world 
lies in imitation. Imitate, therefore, but imitate the best ! ' ' 

An incidental result of this doctrine is to be found in the 
fact that such imitation rarely gets beyond the slavery of a 
literal study of the mechanics of language. Hence at that 
period, and in large measure ever since, the language and 
grammar of the Greeks and Latins have stood between the 
modern man and any real contact with the classics. There 
has been a sort of prejudice against reading the classics in 
English translations; and very few have ever penetrated 
through the original languages to the content of their mes- 
sage. 

The Educational Status of the "Ciceronian." — The 
fully developed Ciceronian attitude belongs, educationally, 
back in the shadows of the Middle Ages ; its essence is not 
modem and scientific, but medieval, pedantic, and scholas- 
tic. The Ciceronian ought to have been a warning to his 
own age and to later ages ; but neither his own age nor the 
later ages learn much from warnings. But if the warning 
could be understood, it would run something like this : No 
mere material can be called either medieval or modern; 
any sort of material lends itself to any sort of organization 
or presentation. The only hope of the free intelligence, 
the free emotional life, and the free social order which 
seemed promised in the Renaissance, is to be found not in 



248 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

materials at all, but in the development of the actual logic 
of a liberal life, of a freed intelligence, of a democratic 
social order. The fundamental educational question of the 
modern world is to be not What shall I study, but How 
shall I know what I do know? Shall I know it as if it 
were a final and unchangeable fragment of a complete and 
changeless universe? Or shall I know it as if it were but 
an item in the growth of an unfinished and incomplete uni- 
verse of experience ? 

But of course no such abstract question appeared to the 
people of the times, not even to Erasmus who satirizes the 
movement in mighty fashion. It was an age grown weary 
of enthusiasms, ready for the refuge of formalisms that 
made thinking unnecessary, even ready to be happy in what 
Milton calls the "asinine feast of brambles and sow-thistles" 
on which the age attempted to nourish itself. And the six- 
teenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries complacently 
accepted such formal educational practices as natural and 
proper; that is to say, the school-men did. We may be 
thankful, however, that tendencies and energies were deeply 
at work all through those centuries which were to change 
completely the current of this complacent acceptance of the 
lifeless and formal and bring back once more to earth en- 
thusiasms for real humanity which, being constantly re- 
newed from generation to generation, survives all degenera- 
tions of the humanities and goes on to new expressions of its 
endless energies and variety. The coming revolutions in 
politics, economies, religion, and science will throw into 
relief new aims, new materials, and especially new modes 
of living and thinking, which will gradually leave the old 
pedantries behind and make even a new education necessary. 

Leaving humanism to follow its own course to the end, 
we must turn to the next answer of the age to the insistent 
educational problems. 



CHAPTER XXV 

PANSOPHY AS AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM 

"We have already noted the tremendous developments of 
new knowledges in the many ranges of new interest that 
came in with the new age, partly as cause, partly as effect 
of this new movement. We have seen that when the Ren- 
aissance was confronted with the intimations of rich de- 
velopments of knowledge along the three great lines that 
emerged in that time, it turned its attention very largely 
to the one dominant interest — classical antiquity. It chose 
as its answer to the question, now that the medieval struc- 
ture of education is gone, what shall we do along educational 
lines, this one great field as inclusive of humanity. We 
have seen the tragic outcome of that choice. Nothing is in- 
clusive of humanity that falls short of all that humanity 
has done and can hope to do. So the world must seek for 
a new and more inclusive ideal and program. Is it not pos- 
sible to include all three of these aspects of the world- 
antiquity, society, nature — in one all-encompassing aim? 

Encyclopedism. — From the days of Plato the efforts of 
school-men have been directed to the construction of a 
curriculum that should be inclusive of all knowledge. 
During the Middle Ages the "Seven Liberal Arts" included 
substantially all learning, as we have seen. And as long 
as the search for knowledge went on under the strict cen- 
sorship of the medieval authorities there was little danger 
of the escape of any knowledge beyond the boundaries of 
the accepted curriculum. Quintilian speaks of this univer- 
sal circle of the sciences which constitutes all knowledge as 

249 



250 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

''encyclopedia," and throughout the Middle Ages extensive 
works treating of all the known departments of knowledge 
were published. 

But with the dawn of the period of discovery, explora- 
tion, and investigation, knowledge overflowed the channels 
of the ' ' Seven Liberal Arts, " the " enclycopedias, ' ' and all 
other fixed organizations of the sciences. Scholastic study 
attempted, however, to keep the straight path of the tradi- 
tional seven; and the humanistic education of the Renais- 
sance, as we have seen, limited its interests to the classics, 
growing more and more restrictive as the years went by, 
until it ended in the narrow groove of Ciceronianism. 
Neither the dogmatic ideals of the scholastics nor the bar- 
ren formalism of the humanists could really satisfy the 
new world in the midst of the unceasing developments of 
knowledge. Encyclopedism again emerges as the educa- 
tional ideal, broadened now to include all the new knowledge 
and with a new name, freeing it somewhat from invidious 
memory. That new name was — 

Pansophy. — Bacon was largely responsible for the emer- 
gence of this conception as the new ideal of education. 
Bacon was a strange mingling of characteristics. As we 
shall see later, he was largely responsible for the beginnings 
of that new method of study which is now called scientific, 
as distinguished from the scholastic. But his first essay 
into the field of education shows him as the advocate of the 
doctrine that the human mind can encompass all knowledge. 
His "Advancement of Learning" attempts to organize all 
existent knowledge so that the mind can absorb it all. His 
own famous remark is, "I have taken all knowledge to my 
province. ' ' But on the other hand, the new method which 
he was to inaugurate has shown the world that the particu- 
lar human mind cannot encompass all learning. And other 
developments of the centuries since Bacon show that edu- 



PANSOPHY AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM 251 

cation is something other than quantity of knowledge ; that 
all learning is not essential to education, 

Comenius. — The great educational exponent of the Pan- 
sophic ideal was John Amos Comenius (1592-1670). 
Though usually presented as an exponent of sense realism, 
he stands especially as an advocate of the possibility of 
teaching all things to all men, though he would limit "all 
things" to those real things which actually nourish the 
mind, as distinguished from the verbalisms taught in these 
schools of his own time. These he calls "slaughter-houses 
of the mind," "places where the mind is fed on words." 
The title of his great work, "Didactica Magna," shows him 
as the advocate of the pansophic ideal: "The Great Di- 
dactic setting forth the whole art of teaching all things to 
all men, or a certain Inducement to found such schools in 
all the Parishes, Towns, and Villages of any Christian King- 
dom, that the entire Youth of both Sexes, none being ex- 
cepted, shall quickly, pleasantly, and thoroughly become 
learned in the sciences, etc." Another of his works was 
called "Pansophici Libri Delineatio." He projected a 
work to be called "Janua Rerum sive Sapientiae Porta," 
which was to have been of the nature of a universal ency- 
clopedia, a complete statement of all that had been accom- 
plished within the field of human knowledge. Though the 
real significance of Comenius in the history of education 
does not rest upon his pansophic conceptions and efforts, 
we are concerned with him here in that light alone; and 
while this presentation of his work is one-sided, it is neces- 
sary, in order to give a true representation of this particu- 
lar ideal which for a time held the attention of the scien- 
tific world. 

Pansophy in England. — Bacon had begun the encyclo- 
pedic movement in its general modern aspect; Comenius 
was the chief educational representative of this ideal. 



252 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Hence he was invited to England to present to Parliament 
his plan for a Collegium Didacticum, or Pansophicum, 
which was to be a sort of universal scientific laboratory 
and clearing-house for the sciences of all nations, modelled 
somewhat on the plans of "Solomon's House" which Bacon 
described in his "New Atlantis." This was in 1641. Be- 
fore anything definite could be undertaken, the great civil 
war broke out and all such projects had to be abandoned. 
But Comenius joined with Samuel Hartlib and John Dury, 
friends who had been instrumental in inviting him to Eng- 
land, in working out a scheme for an "Office of Address" 
to be located in London, which was to become a national 
bureau of help to the poor, securing employment for them. 
This was also to be a means of preventing further divisions 
in religious organizations, an instrument for the advance- 
ment of learning and the founding of schools, and a clearing 
house for the learned of all nations, receiving and spreading 
information about scientific achievements, particularly in- 
ventions, so that all the world might be served by any new 
discovery anywhere worked out. This "Office of Ad- 
dress" was an institution something like the Bureau of 
Education in the United States. It shows the great hopes 
of the age — the encompassing of universal knowledge, the 
organization of universal international relationships, at 
least in knowledge, and the eventual unification of the 
Christian world. 

The End of Pansophy. — Efforts to carry out the ideal of 
pansophy did not cease with the departure of Comenius 
from England. But the details of those further efforts 
need not delay us here. The developments of knowledge 
were too great; no mind could compass all. At the same 
time the developments in logic and psychology roused the 
suspicion, though it was still too early in the history of 
these developments for this to be much more than a sus- 



PANSOPHY AN EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM 253 

picion, that education does not depend upon the amount of 
information which one absorbs, but upon something else. 
So that John Locke wrote, in a treatise published after his 
death in 1704, words to the following effect: The extent 
of possible knowledge is so vast, and the period of our life 
on earth so short, and the avenues by which knowledge en- 
ters the mind of man are so narrow, that a long lifetime is 
not sufficient to acquaint us not merely with the things 
which we are capable of knowing nor with the things which 
it might be convenient for us to know, but even with the 
things which it would be very advantageous for us to 
know. Locke here shows how educational thinking was 
taking the place of traditional ideas and ideals about 
quantity of materials. This may be a very crude divi- 
sion of knowledges, and one having little scientific va- 
lidity, but it indicates that analysis is beginning; and 
analyses will open the way to the new world of valid and 
lasting distinctions. Locke, himself, had earlier conceived 
education, as we shall see, as having more to do with the 
"conduct of the understanding" than with the compassing 
of a certain amount of information in memory. At any 
rate, the discrediting of pansophism brings to an end a the- 
ory that regarded the mind as a sponge and education as a 
process of filling it up with knowledge in the nature of 
universal information From this time forward educational 
thinking must seek other avenues of constructive endeavor. 
Encyclopedism is too easy, despite its difficulties. Mere ac- 
cumulation of bulk information does not make a mind, just 
as mere piling up of grains of sand does not make a world. 
But as we stand in the midst of this period of uncertainty, 
we seem to be facing an insurmountable barrier. Human- 
ism fails, despite all our hopes; pansophism palls upon us, 
as overfeeding on a hardy man. Which way shall we turn ? 
Shall we try to sift out the growing masses of knowledge in 



254 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the hope of finding some magical material that will succeed 
where the humanities failed? Shall we try to get under- 
neath all knowledge, regarded simply as facts, to a con- 
sideration of the real significance of knowledge as a factor 
in the development of mind and as a tool in the organization 
of social life ? 

At any rate, pansophy has shown the limitations of any 
theory of education which depends wholly upon general 
subject-matter. Henceforward educational thinking must 
begin to make some sort of real distinctions within the 
general field of these other assumptions of universality. 
This at least pansophy has contributed to the world. 

Leaving that aspect of the subject, then, we turn to the 
new developments. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE NEW METHOD OF BACON 

When the question was raised, What shall we do with all 
these overwhelming treasures of new knowledge the scholas- 
tics had replied, "Ignore them or compel them to submit 
to official classification"; the narrow humanists of the Ren- 
aissance had replied, "Choose the perfect materials from 
among the mass — choose the classics ' ' ; and an imaginative 
group of men, the pansophists, with their faces to the future 
and with boundless belief in the elasticity of human intelli- 
gence had replied, ' ' Choose all, learn all ; become universal 
minds!" But each of these replies is basically unintelli- 
gent and therefore offers no real hope to the world. If the 
future is to find a pathway of freedom and intelligence out 
of the common world where the ignorant dogmatisms of the 
scholastics, the emotional prejudices of the humanists, and 
the boundless gullibility of the pansophists all exist side by 
side, some new and as yet unrealized, even unsuspected 
method of progress must be discovered, some outlet upon 
some undetermined field of knowing or some new interpre- 
tation of experience. We find the beginnings of this new 
method in Bacon's efforts to establish inductive science. 

Bacon Breaks with the Past. — Bacon began this phase 
of his constructive work by breaking away from the tradi- 
tions of the past and by criticizing not so much the ma- 
terials, but the method, the logic, of the past. Of course in 
Bacon's time (1561-1626), the emotional and religious 
conflicts had already been accomplished in the Renaissance 
and the Reformation; and a very great deal of actual sci- 

255 



256 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

entific work had been carried through. For example, 
Copernicus had overthrown the old Ptolemaic universe long 
before Bacon was born; Kepler was working out his laws 
of planetary motion in the same generation with Bacon; 
and before Bacon's death the invention of telescope and 
microscope had revealed to the world the existence of the 
infinite and the infinitesimal universes, while in the former 
realm Galileo was working out the foundations of mechanics 
with the demonstrations of his laws of falling bodies. But 
practical investigation may go on for a long time before 
it becomes aware that it has departed very far from the 
logic of old orders of knowledge. And it may take some one 
from outside the actual field of practical work to discover 
the new method that is being more or less unconsciously 
followed by the practical workers. Bacon was not much 
of a scientist himself, if by scientist one means observer; 
but Bacon was the first of men to perceive the actualities 
of a genuinely new method in this work, and in this particu- 
lar he is the greatest scientist of his time, the "Father of 
Modern Science," even though he neither clearly saw nor 
definitely stated the method. 

But for the most part the science of Bacon's time was not 
of a high order, as he himself declared; it gave men 
neither the knowledge of things nor the power of control 
over them. And for Bacon "knowledge is power"; that 
is to say, the only knowledge that can be counted for sci- 
ence is knowledge that actually increases man's power of 
control over nature. Hence we must break with the whole 
structure of scholastic science, especially with the methods 
of old knowledge, i.e., scholastic logic, and look for a new 
method, a novum organum, with which to build up the 
new structure of science that can be depended upon. 

The Distempers of Learning. — Bacon points out three 
common defects in science, or, as he calls them, "distem- 



THE NEW METHOD OF BACON 257 

pers" in the learning of his times. The first he calls "fan- 
tastical learning," by which he means the whole range of 
pseudo-science, alchemy, natural magic, old wives' tales, 
credulities, wonders, ghost-stories, miracles, and impos- 
tures of all sorts, which the age had inherited from the ig- 
norant past and which it garnered and conserved as pre- 
cious treasure, but which stood so obstinately in the way 
of valid science. And it still stands ! The second of 
these distempers he calls ' ' contentious learning, ' ' by which 
he means the sort of knowledge professed by the scholastics. 
This is not knowledge at all, but endless disputations about 
questions which, while once important, have lost all their 
significance. "The fable of Scylla," he says, "is a lively 
image of the present state of letters, with the countenance 
and expression of a virgin above, but ending in a multi- 
tude of barking questions, fruitful of controversy and bar- 
ren of effect." The third of these distempers is what he 
calls "delicate learning," referring to the dilettante spirit 
of the Renaissance, which had some considerable vogue all 
over Europe and which was verbal, rather than real, and 
stylish and polished, rather than socially substantial. So 
long as the mind is affected by these distempers, or so 
long as learning is dominated by any one of these three 
types of defect, there can be little hope for real science. 
How shall learning escape from these limitations? And 
at the same time how shall we be able to find our way 
through the new materials that are being discovered, dis- 
tinguishing true from false and building the substantial 
structure of science? More than this, how shall we be 
able to fill in the gaps in learning, actually digging out 
from the unknown the information that we may need to 
make complete our knowledge in any particular direction? 
The answer is the same for all: By the new method. 
The Method of Inductive Science. — Induction, for 



258 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Bacon, means first of all learning from nature herself. It 
means coming to nature with an open mind; it means the 
gathering of a mass of particulars, the facts of sensation 
and perception, individual impressions seen clearly and 
exactly and with the help of instruments, if such exist; it 
means careful progress step by step toward the universal 
that is involved in these carefully observed, ordered, and 
criticized particulars ; it means leaving the universal prop- 
ositions so gained open to future reconstruction, thus 
keeping the system of knowledge open to future growth; 
it means testing conclusions by experiment, thus bringing 
the conclusion back close to the actual source of all real 
knowledge; it means making sure that all ''instances con- 
tradictory" have been carefully considered. Eventually, 
so Bacon thought, science would be able to exhaust the sum 
of particulars in the world; and when these particulars 
have been tabulated, organized, and brought to their proper 
universal conclusions, we should be getting at the ultimate 
forms or "essences" of things, i.e., knowledge, itself. He 
gives us an example of the new method. He undertakes to 
find out what is the essence of heat. He collects a large 
number of instances of heated objects and proceeds to 
search for the quality or essence common to all these ob- 
jects and manifested in the experience of heat. With a 
good deal of ingenious argument he reaches the conclusion 
that the "essence" of heat is motion. 

It is obvious to-day that while Bacon's conception of the 
inductive method was by no means complete or correct, it 
made a revolutionary break with the contentious and de- 
ductive attitudes of the scholastics; and it offered a stern 
rebuke to the delicate and no less deductive attitude of the 
humanists. But it will take centuries after Bacon before 
the full significance of this new method becomes apparent 
for natural science, to say nothing of its meanings for the 



THE NEW METHOD OF BACON 259 

social and educational sciences. But we must now ask, 
Why does such a straightforward method fail to take quick 
hold upon the imaginations of men of intelligence ? Bacon 
saw that his work would not succeed at once, and for very 
clear reasons. He describes these reasons under a striking 
comparison with idols; men's minds are so bound up with 
the worship of old idols that there is no present chance 
that they will care to take up this new method. What are 
these idols ? 

Bacon's Idols. — The mind of man is not free to follow 
new methods in the search for truth. The mind has be- 
come subordinate to conditions of its own methods, to fears 
of its own establishing, to idols its own hands have made, 
as we saw in the folkways. Induction demands that the 
mind shall start with no prejudices or presuppositions, or 
so Bacon thought. But since we are in the power of these 
idols, there seems to be little real chance for the inductive 
sciences. 

The first of these idols he calls the "idols of the tribe." 
By this term he means certain prejudices and presupposi- 
tions common to the whole race, e.g., the fear of anything 
new. This is a genuine folkway attitude, an idol remain- 
ing from the primitive world. The second of these idols 
he calls the "idols of the cave," i.e., presuppositions which 
belong to the individual alone. "For everyone, besides the 
faults he shares with the race, has a cave or den of his own 
which refracts and discolors the light of nature," e.g., the 
"ideals of a gentleman." The third group he calls "idols 
of the forum," by which he means the controlling influ- 
ences that inhere in words. "Men believe that their rea- 
son governs words, but it is also true that words, like 
the arrows from a Tartar bow, are shot back, and react 
upon the mind." Such a word as "coward" exercises re- 
markable influence over men's actions. The fourth of 



260 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATIOM 

these idols he calls the "idols of the theater," by which 
he means the presuppositions and prejudices that come 
through the influence of current systems of thinking which 
are not real, but "stage plays, representing worlds of their 
own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion, ' ' ^ e.g., 
the fear of socialism. 

Bacon insists that all such obstacles to learning shall be 
cleared away, especially all the scholastic philosophy which 
is made of words and has no genuine relation to the truth 
of nature. In this cleared ground man must begin in 
humility, reverence, and charity to work for that genuine 
knowledge which is to relieve the sorrows and distresses 
of men, to do away with darkness, and to purify the under- 
standing of the race. 

The further study of the principle of induction does not 
concern us here. Bacon fought for it valiantly, albeit in 
a compromising way. He failed to establish it as the 
working method of science. He made a real impression 
upon the age, but his method seemed, even to those who 
were already using it, far too revolutionary and imprac- 
tical. 

In fact. Bacon's induction is very imperfect. An in- 
ductive method is not wholly inductive in a literal sense ; it 
is but a different mode of stating the general deductive 
method. But Bacon had little room for old knowledge; 
his "idols" included practically all old materials, and 
these he would ruthlessly sweep away. 

He did not recognize the value or place of hypothetical 
thinking in science. He supposed that collecting of data 
and organization of knowledge could go on in a factual 
way without thinking, without a guiding program in the 
mind, without presuppositions of any kind. He did not 
know that a mind does not work when it is empty. He 

1 "Novum Organum," Section 68. 



THE NEW METHOD OF BACON 261 

did not realize that the one great difference between scho- 
lastic philosophy and inductive science consists in this: 
in scholastic philosophy the presuppositions of knowledge 
are held dogmatically as elements in a fixed system, while 
in inductive science the presuppositions are held as hy- 
potheses subject always to the test of critical experiences. 
Bacon failed ; but he began a task that still persists 
through the ages. Meanwhile his failure throws the 
school-world back upon the materials of education in a 
new and more complete sense. There is nothing now left 
to do, but to sift out these materials and use the best that 
can be found in the old dogmatic ways. We turn to these 
processes of sifting. May we here find the clue to the 
eventual solution of our problem? 



CHAPTER XXVII 

SIFTING THE MATERIALS OF EDUCATION 

The problem of method in scientific progress or in edu- 
cation is rather too abstract to interest many people long. 
The search for method, or for methods, seems remote, un- 
real, academic. Practical men soon give over this search 
and turn their energies to the concrete aspects of a prob- 
lem, usually to the handling of the materials that are avail- 
able. Hence the solution of most of our problems has 
been practical, and therefore materialistic, i.e., in terms of 
materials, rather than methodical, theoretical, and illu- 
minating. But we have already seen that the masses of 
materials available for education had grown too great for 
any one individual to master, or, indeed, for any one sys- 
tem to encompass. Hence those who once again turn to 
the materials of education for their answer to the prob- 
lems of the age are compelled to begin a process of sifting 
their materials, selecting those which seem most worth 
while, and most likely to fit the needs of the educational 
situation as they conceive it. 

Let us note at once, however, that the process of choos- 
ing materials is something more than the mere taking of 
certain sorts and of leaving the rest. It involves the more 
or less consciously held presupposition of a point of view, 
a conception of aim and means; so that, despite himself, 
the most practical man inevitably shows attitudes, outlooks 
or prejudices, and methods, — even method, — in the choice 
of his materials. The difference between the practical 
man and the theoretical man is simply this : the theoretical 

262 



SIFTING THE MATERIALS OF EDUCATION 263 

man knows what his theory is, and is therefore in a posi- 
tion to criticize and correct it; the practical man does not 
know what his theory is (though he has one, implicitly, at 
least), and therefore he cannot criticize his attitude to- 
ward his problem by the mistakes in his practice. Neither 
can the latter criticize his practical mistakes by appeal to 
any more ultimate theoretical understanding. He is lost 
in the mazes of traditional practice; he is isolated in his 
own fixed habits. He can merely fall back from one habit 
to another. 

Still, for very insistent reasons, the world turns from 
the theoretical man and follows the practical man. So 
it came about in the seventeenth century that the work 
of Bacon was largely ignored. The problem of scientific 
method seemed very remote from reality, even as it does 
still.^ The problem of finding satisfactory educational 
materials that would serve the purposes of the age seemed 
much nearer to reality and to practical common sense than 
the search for a new method. The seventeenth century 
becomes a period of sifting and organizing materials; but, 
as we have already noted and as we shall later see, this 
sifting and organizing process carries much farther than is 
at first foreseen. 

Historic Basis of this Sifting Process. — We have al- 
ready seen that during the Renaissance three rather dis- 
tinct aspects of the new, modern world came into prom- 
inence. These three aspects were: first, that inner, emo- 
tional, and personal world of joy of living in the present 
which found its fulfilment and its support in the Greek and 
Latin classics; second, the outer world of human life, the 
society that is all about us, as over against the deferred 
heavenly society of medieval promise; third, the new 
world of external physical nature, revealed even more 

1 The present war seems to be making research more real. 



264 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

wonderfully in the seventeenth century by means of the 
telescope and microscope. These three aspects of ex- 
perience seem to have stood forth rather distinctly in the 
full flush of the Renaissance. They seem to be fairly dis- 
tinguishable in a practical way, even in ordinary lan- 
guage, and they are capable of becoming the bases of the 
sifting and organizing of the constantly increasing masses 
of educational materials. 

That is to say, in the seventeenth century three rather 
distinct types of educational program arose, each basing 
its claims to preference upon the worth of the kind of 
educational materials proposed. One group held that the 
problems of education in this new age could best be solved 
by a school curriculum made out of the materials of the 
classics; a second insisted that the conception of school 
connotes a certain bookishness which has been too often 
confused with education, whereas the only sure and fun- 
damental materials of education are to be found in the 
actual experiences of living among men, or in the study 
of those vital subjects which mean something to men of 
affairs and which have not yet become lifeless by being 
incorporated into the curriculum of the school; and a 
third group found the clue to all worthy educational effort 
in the realities of physical nature, as opposed to the ver- 
balisms and pedantries of the schools and the artificialities 
of the social world in general. 

Each of these parties put its emphasis upon a selected 
and typical material. In that sense, each was material- 
istic. That is to say, neither of these programs avowedly 
raises the question of method. To this extent they are all 
at one with the materialism of the Middle Ages. But we 
must not fail to note that, although the upholders of these 
various programs did not seem to realize the fact, this 
very principle of selection of certain materials eventually 



CLASSICAL MATERIALISM 265 

does throw the whole problem of educational progress back 
into the field of method. That is to say, the only solu- 
tion of the problem of materials is in appeal to funda- 
mental method. This will be the great gain from this 
period of partisanship. At this earlier time, however, the 
emphasis is all upon types of material. Education is ma- 
terialistic, just as it was in the Middle Ages; the liberat- 
ing and illuminating effects of modern theory have not 
yet been felt. We must now consider these three types 
of materialism in some detail. 

(a) classical materialism, or humanistic realism 
"We have already seen how the fine realities and finer hopes 
of the Renaissance were slowly destroyed through the 
growth of that seemingly inevitable literalism and pedan- 
try of the later period, the period of the narrower human- 
ism. We have seen how all the genuine life of the classics 
escaped under the influence of this degenerative process, 
until nothing was left of that original beauty and promise 
but the vocabulary of Cicero. Out of all the world of 
wealth of classical antiquity nothing remained but the 
verbalisms of a Latin grammar based on a single authority. 
This was the absolute end of reality; it was the apotheosis 
of the meaningless and the unreal. But of course such 
devitalizing tendencies cannot forever control human ac- 
tivities; there is too much real beauty and life and light 
in the classics for such a fate. 

Realism versus Verbalism.— Something of the concep- 
tion of the earlier Renaissance was bound to be restored. 
The delusion that the purpose of education was the form- 
ing of young Ciceros was bound to run its course. It had, 
indeed, shortly run its full, destructive course. In its 
place there was now to come, in the seventeenth century, 
that fine and noble conception that men may come most 



266 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

fully to know themselves, their own period of history, and 
their own proper places in the world, by rising into the 
present through the mastery of that most human chapter 
in all history — ^^the period of classical antiquity. This 
could be done most satisfactorily, of course, through the 
mastery of the inner life and spirit of the classical litera- 
tures. Such a conception had a secure justification, too. 
The new age, as we have seen, was more and more com- 
plex in all directions, — industrial, political, religious, and 
intellectual. It seemed impossible at the time to grasp 
enough of these divergent complexities to make possible 
a real mastery of the immediate age. Some other method 
of mastery seemed necessary. The classic world seemed 
to furnish this clue. The ancient world was quite as com- 
plete in its essential humanity as the modern; but at the 
same time that ancient world was much simpler in detail, 
less distracted. It seemed not impossible that a real un- 
derstanding of the essentially human (which would open 
the way to a mastery of the present) could best be found 
in those older literatures, provided they were studied for 
the sake of the life that was in them, for the sake of an 
acquaintance with the rich life of the Greeks and Ro- 
mans, rather than for the working out of endless gram- 
maticisms. 

That is to say, if the classic materials could once more 
become real, they could once again bring us to humanity, 
just as they originally grew out of humanity. So we come 
to that new period in classical education, the period of 
classical realism as opposed to the period of classical ver- 
balism. Literatures must be read for their revelations 
of life, for their setting forth of the universal humanity, 
and not for their use as illustrating pedantic abstractions 
in grammar. It is the living content of the classics, not 
their abstract form, that makes them the supreme ma- 



CLASSICAL MATERIALISM 267 

terials for educational purposes. Greek and Latin gram- 
mar must no longer be allowed to keep the needy world 
from the nourishment that is to be found in the classical 
literatures. 

Leaders of the New Movement. — After Erasmus (1456- 
1536), who was always an opponent of the narrowing 
tendencies in education, but who lived before the times 
of this realistic movement, the two great names in the 
newer developments of this broader humanism are Rabe- 
lais and John Milton. Rabelais was, indeed, but a little 
later than Erasmus, — that is, he was born in 1483 and died 
in 1553. He was not a teacher in the schools; he was a 
monk, a lecturer on anatomy, a physician, and a writer. 
He is, of course, best known as a writer. His satires had 
tremendous influence. His ' * Pantagruel' ' and "Gargan- 
tua" are bold and novel characterizations of the age in 
which he lived. But Rabelais was himself not a wholly 
liberated man. We have spoken of this period as being 
still predominantly materialistic. Rabelais shows this 
clearly. He was a violent opponent of the scholastic ver- 
balisms that made up the education of his period; he sat- 
irized unmercifully the education that could turn out such 
an utter failure as "Gargantua." Yet in his whole proc- 
ess of reeducation Rabelais never gets away from the books. 

John Milton (1608-1674) is the truest representative 
of this realistic movement. His "Tractate on Education," 
published in 1644, sets forth in striking fashion the best 
educational ideals of the age from the standpoint of the 
classical tradition. Milton was the poet of the revolution 
in England and was in sympathy with most of the ideals 
of the revolution. But in the midst of the revolutionary 
period he was compelled to turn from literature to school- 
keeping. He was a master of a small, private school for 
seven years, and he was able to do wonders in the way 



268 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

of inculcating learning into his select pupils. Like certain 
modern writers, however, he generalizes his experience a 
little too conclusively when he insists that his method of 
teaching would prevent the waste of seven or eight years 
now spent merely in "scraping together so much miserable 
Greek and Latin," for in that time he would give to boys 
"a complete and generous education, which fits a man to 
perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the of- 
fices both private and public of peace and war." That is 
to say, ]\Iilton assumes all too readily that any teacher 
can do with any pupils what he did with his few select 
pupils. But that is not his most grievous error. He, also, 
like Rabelais, clings to the books, and to the Latin and 
Greek books. He despises all the modern movements in 
education, such as those represented by Comenius, etc., 
except this one movement to transform the teaching of 
the classics. He wants to escape from words, from the 
"asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles," to real 
things; but the real things must come through the Greek 
and Latin literatures in which agriculture, architecture, 
and all the rest of the subjects worth studying were treated 
masterfully by the authorities of old, only they must 
come as pleasant occupations from which it would be diffi- 
cult to "drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and 
stubs . . . from the infinite desire of such a happy nur- 
ture." 

The Outcome of Classical Materialism. — "We must take 
leave of the subject at this point for the present. We shall 
come upon it again at a later time. We shall then see 
something of the tragedy of the story of the classics. Per- 
haps it is the heritage of the thousands of years of use 
as materials; maybe it is the inevitable result of the clas- 
sical tradition; whatever the cause, the classics seem to 
remain fixed in their seventeenth century aloofness. Nat- 



SOCIAL MATERIALISM 269 

ural science and psychology have come to transform the 
world of experience and the theory and practice of edu- 
cation; yet the classics still insist upon being the "preem- 
inent materials of education. ' ' There is, to be sure, a cer- 
tain attitude of mind, a certain historic orthodoxy which 
sustains this classic tradition. But in an age when the 
world needs the sustaining energies of all the resources of 
humanism it is a little bit unhumanistic for the classical 
materials to hold themselves apart from the world, de- 
manding a special recognition for their superior values. 

(b) social materialism 
Over against the humanistic realists who proposed that 
Greek and Latin should be rescued from their Ciceronian 
narrowness and made to serve the purposes of a broad 
and rich modern culture and an introduction to the world 's 
life, we must next observe the representatives of the some- 
what startling doctrine that education should prepare the 
individual to become a man of the world. Of course this 
emphasis in education is very old. Plato and Aristotle 
had insisted that education must fit men for their place in 
civic life. All through the Middle Ages certain classes of 
society were recognized as having peculiar relationships to 
human welfare, and these, who were to become the rulers, 
were supposed to receive an education fitting them for 
their particular activities. During the later Middle Ages 
and in the early modern period treatises on the education 
of princes, rulers, or governors were frequently published. 
Later, as monarchies of the older, absolute order began to 
break down and the new aristocracy arose, especially in 
England, the education of these new classes became a mat- 
ter of social concern. Hence the books on education be- 
gin to concern themselves with the education of the nobil- 
ity, and later still the education of the gentleman becomes 



270 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the greatest task of the state. Even as late as the time of 
John Locke we find this ideal rather succinctly set forth: 
"That most to be taken care of is the gentleman's calling; 
for if those of that rank are by their education once set 
right, they will quickly bring the rest into order. ' ' ^ 

The Doctrines of Social Realism. — But the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries saw the development of a some- 
what broader conception of public education. Deep in 
the soil of the common life democratic impulses were be- 
ginning to show signs of activity. It was still a long time 
until the world should be willing to base government upon 
the consent of the governed ; it was a longer time until the 
world should fully recognize that the stability of society 
rests upon the intelligence of its constituents. But these 
daring, revolutionary doctrines are beginning to stir in 
impulses under the soil. The time is coming when men are 
not going to be satisfied with the pedantries of the narrow 
humanism, any more than they are satisfied with the nar- 
row theologies of the Middle Ages. Men are breaking 
away from the traditions of the schools; the very concep- 
tion of school is distasteful to many. The stupid routine 
of the schoool tends to make the boy a "greater and more 
conceited coxcomb"; it does not fit him for his world. 
Hence there are those who insist that education will best 
do its work when it puts a minimum of emphasis upon 
mere bookishness, but rather sends the boy out into the 
world of men and affairs, into the experience of travel 
among all sorts and conditions, bringing familiarity with 
a wide range of manners and customs, strange peoples, 
and varied conditions of living, thus tearing the boy loose 
from his isolation in his own parish and his own age and 
helping him to get the experiences and marks of the trav- 
eled man of the world. It is even written in this age : 

1 Locke : "Thoughts on Education." 



SOCIAL MATERIALISM 271 

How much the fool that has been sent to roam 
Excels the fool that always stays at home! 

Books cannot perform this service, for the book is really 
the great means of dulling the wits, of formalizing the 
mind, of reducing the whole of conduct to a conventional 
routine. Books are products of the world of experience; 
if they are worth anything, they are writ out of broad ex- 
perience and they cannot be read profitably without some- 
thing of that same world of experience in the reader. 
Schools fail to educate for the reason that teachers are 
pedants, not real men, and they are sticklers for useless and 
meaningless details, afraid of the vital breath of life, afraid 
of the modern problems. No, education must prepare for 
the "best of all arts, — the art of living well"; and this is a 
matter of life, of living, rather than of the schools, or books, 
or learning. Let us turn, for a chief representative of 
this tendency, to Montaigne, a French aristocrat, traveler, 
and writer. 

Montaigne (1533-1592). — Montaigne was too much a 
man of the world to confine his writings wholly to educa- 
tional topics in the narrower sense. But he wrote two 
valuable essays on the subject. These are his "On Ped- 
antry" and "On the Education of Children." In these 
essays he sets forth rather clearly his conception of educa- 
tion. He overwhelms the narrow humanism of his times 
with his ridicule. He holds that ideas are more important 
than mere words, that, indeed, "whoever has in his mind 
a clear and vivid idea will express it in one way or an- 
other." He holds that education is for the purpose of 
forming character, which alone can come from experience 
and breadth of vision. Hence he would send young men 
abroad early, under the care of proper tutors, in order 
that they may "whet and sharpen" their wits "by rub- 
bing them on those of others." Such training should be- 



272 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

gin when the boy is very young. The book he studies 
should be the book of society. "I would have this the 
book my young gentleman should study with most atten- 
tion; for so many humors, so many sects, so many judg- 
ments, opinions, laws, and customs teach us to judge aright 
of our own, and inform our understanding to discover 
its imperfect and natural infirmity." 

Montaigne would have all these experiences broadened 
and deepened by the study of what he calls philosophy, 
along with some of the older subjects of the schools; but 
he especially insists that men must come to have some sort 
of philosophy. "Philosophy is that which instructs us to 
live . . . " — by which we may see that he was not of the 
academic succession. The whole man calls for his earnest 
care. "It is not a soul, it is not a body that we are train- 
ing ; it is a man, and we ought not to divide him into two 
parts." 

Method in Social Realism. — ^We have said above that 
the problem of method did not appear in this seventeenth 
century sifting of materials. By that statement was 
meant that the real foundations of method were not se- 
riously sought. Methods of teaching were discussed, but 
these all practically involve the application of old, tradi- 
tional principles in some novel way. Montaigne expresses 
himself freely along these lines; for Montaigne does not 
suppose that the boy will never go to school. He rings the 
changes on old methods and makes them over so that these 
new social materials will be more fully assimilated to the 
real experience of the student. He says: 

I would not only have the instructor demand an account of the 
words contained in a lesson, but of the sense and substance; and 
judge of the profit he had made of it, not by the testimony of 
his memory, but by his own judgment. It is a sign of crudity 
and indigestion for a man to throw up his meat as he swallowed 



SOCIAL MATERIALISM 273 

it. The stomacli has not done its work unless it has changed the 
form and altered the condition of the food given to it. We see 
men gape after nothing but learning, and when they say such a 
one is a learned man, they think they have said enough. 

A mere bookish knowledge is useless. It may embellish ac- 
tions, but it is not a foundation for them. Among the liberal 
studies let us begin with those which make us free; not that they 
do not all serve in some measure to the instruction and use of 
life, as do all other things, but let us make choice of those which 
directly and professedly serve to that end. If we were once able 
to restrain the offices of human life within their just and natural 
limits, we should find that most of the subjects now taught are 
of no great use to us ; and even in those that are useful there are 
many points it would be better to leave alone, and, following 
Socrates' direction, Imiit our studies to those of real utility. The 
youth we would train has little time to spare; he owes but the 
first fifteen or sixteen years of his life to his tutor; the remainder 
is due to action. Many a time I have seen men totally useless on 
account of an immoderate thirst for knowledge. There is noth- 
ing like alluring the appetite and affection, otherwise you make 
nothing but so many asses laden with books. By virtue of the 
lash you give them a pocketful of learning to keep, whereas you 
should not only lodge it with them, but marry it to them, and 
make it a part of their very minds and souls. . . . We labor and 
plot to stuff the memory, and in the meantime leave the conscience 
and the understanding empty. . . . But it is not enough that our 
education does not spoil us, it must change us for the better. 
Some of our parliaments and courts admit officers after testing 
them as to their learning; others, in addition, require their judg- 
ment in some case of law. The second method is the better, I 
think. Both are necessary, and it is very essential that men 
should be defective in neither; yet knowledge is not so absolutely 
necessary as judgment.^ 

By the very nature of the ease this social material es- 
capes somewhat from the imputation of materialism; and, 

1 Montaigne: "The Education of Children." 



274 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

as in the above quotation, Montaigne frequently rises above 
the materialistic level. But still for the most part he is 
not able to escape the feeling that education consists pri- 
marily in taking on certain materials. That is to say, 
while this doctrine of a socialized experience is one of the 
permanent contributions to educational theory and prac- 
tice, it was not stated in its final form by Montaigne. In- 
deed, as we shall see, we are just now, in the twentieth 
century, in the very midst of the problem of analyzing, 
understanding, organizing, and stating the significance 
of social experience in education. 
We turn next to a third type of material. 

(C) SENSE MATERIALISM, OR NATURAL REALISM 

If *'the proper study of mankind is man," still men 
begin their study of man as far away from home as possi- 
ble. Of course all study of the world is really the study 
of man ; but philosophy went on for several hundred years 
before Socrates finally brought it "down from heaven" 
and immediately turned it to the study of humanity. So 
in the same way all through these ages we have been draw- 
ing slowly closer and closer to the central problems of 
education. In these processes of sifting out the materials 
of the new world certain fundamental tendencies appear 
which have profound influence upon the succeeding de- 
velopments. Perhaps we should note here, however, that 
none of these processes, or tendencies, is exhaustively pre- 
sented ; only the barest outlines, the ' ' high points, * ' can be 
suggested. 

The New World of Nature. — Despite the opposition of 
the classicists and the traditionalists generally, the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries saw the gradual accept- 
ance of the materials of physical nature as a legitimate part 
of the materials of education. These materials had been 



SENSE MATERIALISM 275 

unknown during the Middle Ages, being ignored as base, or 
shunned as defiling. To be sure, there had been the search 
for some means of turning base metals into pure gold, and 
this had helped much in the secret development of the be- 
ginnings of modern science. And there had been other 
tendencies all through the Middle Ages that went on under 
quiet conditions; not all the "science" of the times was 
"foolishness." After the coming of the Saracens real sci- 
ence forged ahead apace. Later the Renaissance released 
the minds of men from their old attitudes toward the world 
of nature and threw over all existence the mantle of ro- 
mance and beauty. Human emotions found a new means 
of release in these new attitudes and stimulations, and the 
old prejudices were broken. 

The new age forced amazing new resources in the way 
of knowledge upon the world. Bacon, as we have seen, 
felt the need of some more effective tool for the proper 
handling of these new materials and their integration with 
the old world of experience. Some little progress was 
made in the forging of that tool in the seventeenth cen- 
tury; but on the whole nature was still to be regarded as 
a crude mass of materials, to be picked over and culled 
over, like scraps upon a bargain counter, for whatever of 
incidental interest might appear. 

To be sure, certain constructive theories began to make 
their appearance. The created universe, limited in extent 
and centering in the earth, was turned inside out by the 
organizing work of Copernicus with his revolutionary the- 
ory; the telescope and the microscope were soon to make 
old theories of nature and life utterly untenable; the 
threads of the ancient doctrine of evolution, lost for two 
thousand years, were rediscovered, and the discovery of 
new tribes of men made old theories of the origin of hu- 
manity untenable. The sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 



276 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

turies were amazingly fruitful in the accumulation of 
facts, the atoms of knowledge ; but for the most j_ .rt these 
facts lacked organization and coherence, and hence they 
found slight welcome in the traditional schools. Classical 
materialism had no real place for them. "Life must be 
learned from the books"; even knowledge of the world of 
nature must still be sought in the writings of Aristotle, 
the "Master of those who know." In the same way the 
social realists found little value in piling up stores of gen- 
eral information about the world of nature. Montaigne 
insists that we should follow Socrates' direction and 
"limit our studies to those of real utility." 

Hence, if these new materials of nature are to be in- 
cluded in the accepted materials of education, some posi- 
tive argument must be made for them. That much of 
the problem of method was rather clearly seen by the 
sense realists, such, for example, as Comenius. But just 
what that would involve of psychological reconstruction 
no one, of course, could foresee. If these new materials 
are to be utilized, an utterly new educational point of 
view will be needed, which will give these new materials 
foundations upon which to build and arguments with which 
to meet the jeers of the older materials. This much is 
clear. 

The Educational Conception. — Here was not merely a 
new subject matter; here was a new kind of subject mat- 
ter. Hitherto, since the days of Socrates, the prevailing 
method of teaching had been memorizing. To be sure, the 
social realists had gone beyond or outside this endless 
task of memorizing; they had conceived of education as 
something immediately experienced in the midst of travel 
and affairs. They had depended upon a sort of intuition, 
or social perception, as the basis of their accomplishments. 
But they had no great following in the schools; memoriz- 



SENSE MATERIALISM 277 

ing was still the essential pedagogical tool of all learning. 
Now .he appreciation of this new material of nature 
brings in a new aspect of the mind. Francis Bacon had 
insisted upon observation as the basis of his inductive 
method; and the use of the senses in this way as the main 
avenue of all education was gradually coming to recogni- 
tion. But we must make careful note here that there had 
been almost no study of psychology since the days of 
Aristotle, at least, of any psychology that would have any 
real significance for educational practice. We must note, 
too, that the development of this new type of material was 
important not primarily because it brought in a new as- 
pect of the world of experience, but because it once more 
forced home to educational leaders and reformers the 
problem of method. The classical materials were memor- 
ized; the average student of the classics did not know 
what he was studying. He memorized vocabularies, gram- 
matical rules, and, to a degree, selected passages from the 
literatures ; but he did not know what he was doing. The 
reason is plain. He was dealing with the finished ma- 
terials of a sophisticated world, the concepts of life worked 
out in the microcosm of Athens or Rome. He could not 
know their meanings ; he could only memorize and retain 
the literal materials until experience could illuminate or 
a kindly forgetfulness erase. Not so now with these new 
materials of the world of physical nature. These are not, 
at first, conceptual materials at all ; these are perceptual 
materials primarily, and conceptual only in a secondary 
sense, i.e., after they have been worked over into the sci- 
ences. The pupil must come to them first hand, getting the 
actual experience of the object before learning some book- 
ish definition, i.e., some reconstructed conceptual statement 
of the object; and he must get the language part of his 
knowledge of the object in the process, and for the purpose 



278 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

of giving expression to the common, concrete experience 
part. This sets the materials of sensation off from all other 
materials. 

Thus it will be seen that the very movement toward the 
sifting of these various knowledges, their separation from 
one another, and their organization into curricula for the 
schools or for other forms of educational effort, led inevita- 
bly to the opening anew of the problem of method. In one 
sense it may be said that in the consideration of these ma- 
terials, there will be raised for the first time the question 
of the relation of materials to mental processes. That 
is to say, for the first time the problem of an educational 
psychology has a real chance to appear; for the first time 
the part that mind plays in the educational process will 
break through the general materialism of educational 
thinking; and thus materialism will develop its own in- 
consistencies, its own problems, and demonstrate its own 
insufficiency. All this, of course, does not appear at this 
time. Even to Comenius the problem is only superficially 
present, though the influence upon him of Bacon tends to 
make him feel the problem more keenly than any other 
will feel it for a century. No, it takes time to develop the 
implications of progress. But little by little, as we follow 
the course of educational thinking through the next cen- 
tury, we shall see this question of method gradually for- 
mulate itself. What is the place of mind, of mental ac- 
tivity, in the educational process? What attention must 
the teacher pay to the mind of the child, as over against 
the attention so long paid to the materials of the lessons? 
That question, so commonplace now and yet even to-day 
so little understood, slowly struggled into the conscious- 
ness of this realistic age through the work of men who were 
not properly to be called realists at all. But when the age 
had become aware of the problem, another age had dawned, 



SENSE MATERIALISM 279 

an age of larger minds and more encompassing compre- 
hensions. The problem of materials had passed into sec- 
ondary place for the real leaders of educational progress; 
the problem of materials could never again be the central 
problem in education for any save those whose comprehen- 
sion of the movements of human thought had stopped with 
the achievements of the seventeenth century. To be sure, 
even yet, as we shall see, the belated upholders of old 
partisan programs are to be seen and heard in the land. 
It may be said without exaggeration that even to-day many 
educators are utterly innocent of any comprehension that 
there has been any fundamental progress since the middle 
of the seventeenth century. Like "Uncle Jasper" reiter- 
ating in his pious, illiterate way, "The sun do move," 
these belated representatives of honorable traditions stiU 
may be heard to cry, "The only genuine materials of edu- 
cation are the old theories I believe in!" 

Meanwhile the world has moved on from the discussion of 
materials to the examination of the more insistent and far 
more important problems of the various methods that un- 
derlie these various materials, even to the larger and more 
inclusive problem of method in its largest sense : What is 
the actual nature of human experience, and what are 
the fundamental processes by which the immature expe- 
rience of the child becomes the world-experience of the 
cultivated and disciplined adult, — the man "with power on 
his own self and on the world"? This problem of the 
nature of experience arises out of these conflicts of ma- 
terials. The mind of man is not the pawn of some fancier 
of materials, however noble his materials may be. There 
is a larger future for the race than that of bowing forever 
at the shrine of old materials. The spirit of man is cre- 
ative, and passes on from age to age to the construction 
of new worlds of freedom. 



280 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

The Sense Materialists.— Wolfgang Ratke (1571-1635) 
was one of the first leaders in this educational movement. 
His interest was not wholly directed toward these mate- 
rials of the senses, however. Rather he illustrates the 
point just made, that the mind needs not only new ma- 
terials for its larger structures, but also new methods. 
Ratke is, therefore, a follower of Bacon on the side of 
method, rather than on the side of materials. He was very 
much interested in the subject of language; and he con- 
ceived of language as a tool of the mind, which might, 
under wrong conditions, become the master of the mind, 
just as Bacon had set forth in his illustration of the idols 
of the theater or of the forum, in which he points out how 
old words and old systems of thought bind men's minds to 
the past. Accordingly, Ratke would have all instruction 
carried on in the vernacular, partly for the sake of social 
and national uniformity, but also partly for the sake of 
making sure that all the children of the nation should 
have a real contact with the arts and the sciences. It is 
very important to note here that these new movements in 
the sciences come in along with the large developments of 
the modern languages, as if, in establishing the new un- 
derstanding of the world, the mind must have a new in- 
strument of statement and organization. The escape from 
Latin into the modern vernaculars is one of the notable 
achievements of the human mind, for it meant escape from 
these ''idols" of Bacon (at least, in large part) into the 
freedom of the modern scientific attitude. 

Ratke found the roots of method in nature; psychology 
had not yet developed the true foundations of the teach- 
ing processes. But the search for method is one of the 
true reasons for the ultimate development of psychology; 
psychology is the answer to the demand of the growing 
experience of the world for a clearer understanding of its 



SENSE MATERIALISM 281 

own nature. So, for example, when Ratke presumably 
writes: "Since nature uses a particular method proper 
to herself with which the understanding of man is in a 
certain connection, regard must be had to it also in the 
art of teaching, for all unnatural and violent or forcible 
teaching and learning is harmful and weakens nature," 
we need to see that nature here does not mean some aspect 
of the world completely divorced from man. It includes 
man; and when men begin to find method in nature, it 
will not be long before they also begin to find it in human 
experience; and that will give us psychology. 

Comenius (1592-1670) is, however, the greatest of these 
advocates of the new materials of nature as the basis of 
education. A sad fate, however, a fate such as that which 
befell Aristotle, kept Comenius from having any large 
influence upon his own or the immediately succeeding 
generations, except in reference to the teaching of the 
languages, with which we are not concerned here. The 
writings of Comenius were almost completely unknown 
until the middle of the nineteenth century, when they 
were brought to light. His influence was almost wholly 
personal, therefore, and extended but little beyond the 
circle of his own contacts. He was called to England, as 
we have seen in a previous chapter, but for a purpose 
somewhat remote from our present interest. His concep- 
tion of education, as we can now see from his writings, 
was very large and inclusive; but while largely scientific, 
it was not wholly divorced from his older theological 
training. If his writings had become part of the current 
educational discussion, doubtless the general course of 
educational history would have been different. But they 
did not. They came into the stream of educational 
thought in the middle of the nineteenth century. Hence 
any full account of his work would really belong to that 



282 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

period, rather than to the period in which he lived. But 
by the middle of the nineteenth century the general con- 
ception of a method according to nature was coming in 
from other sources. Comenius did but strengthen that 
which was being done by other forces. 

To be sure, Comenius had been a prolific writer of text- 
books for the schools; and these texts were largely used, 
in Germany especially. But they were, for the most part, 
texts dealing with the teaching of the languages, not with 
the materials of nature. There is a real stream of influ- 
ence reaching from the interest in nature which Comenius 
had developed to the Real-schulen of Germany in the eigh- 
teenth century. The first of these, founded at Berlin in 
1747 by Hecker, included drawing, history, geography, 
geometry, arithmetic, mechanics, and architecture in its 
curriculum, as well as the Latin language, writing, religion, 
and ethics. Toward the end of the eighteenth century 
these schools became centers of naturalism in education, 
under the general influence of the work of Rousseau. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

EDUCATION AS A PROCESS OF MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

We have seen that the programs of the realists, empha- 
sizing, as they did, various types of subject matter, were 
not permanently satisfactory. This was for the reason, — 
as we can now see, — that they leave out of account the 
most important aspect of the whole program — mind, the 
mind of the learner. None the less, these suggested solu- 
tions raise this central problem of education into at least 
partial view; they make the world face seriously the pos- 
sibilities that lie in materials of various sorts; and they 
show conclusively in their outcome that the problem of 
education can never be solved by any sort of materials 
alone. That is to say, the sifting of materials shows both 
the importance of various kinds of materials and the fail- 
ure of any one kind to solve the problem. 

But this sifting of experience shows another important 
fact, viz., that these materials themselves have various 
mental values and significances. This raises more impor- 
tant questions. What is the real nature of materials? 
What is the real nature of the mental processes that are 
involved in education and that seem to be able to handle 
these various types of materials? And what is the real 
nature of education itself. Is it, after all, the taking on of 
some sort of material? Is it memorizing set lessons? Is 
it assimilating experiences? Is it observing natural phe- 
nomena? Is it absorption of fine ideals? Is it doing of 
disagreeable tasks? Is it an effort to save the soul? And 
finally there must emerge, soon or late, this more pressing 

283 



284 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

problem: Is it possible to analyze and relate and under- 
stand the various types of mental processes involved 
in dealing with these various types of materials in such a 
way as to make use of these processes in the actual prac- 
tice of teaching? Of course we are to understand that 
these questions and problems emerge slowly from the great 
bulk of the unanalyzed problem. But we are to under- 
stand that such problems as these were actually involved 
in the developments through which we are passing. One 
thing is sure: the race has won its intellectual triumphs so 
far only by means of the most strenuous efforts. These 
struggles of the centuries are not academic, forced, or inci- 
dental sports ; they are the most vital struggles of the race. 
By these struggles the race has won its way out of some of 
the ignorance of the folkway world, out of the inertia of 
old habits and traditions, out of the systems built in earlier 
and less intelligent times, into something, at least, of knowl- 
edge, of intelligence, of farther-sighted control of the con- 
ditions of living. None of these systems is final; they are 
all parts of the lasting conversation by which the world 
has been arguing its way out into the hitherto unexplored 
regions of human nature and making itself acquainted with 
life and the world. That task is not yet finished ; the con- 
versation is still far from being concluded; and certainly 
the seventeenth century must not be accepted as giving 
the final touches to human progress. 

The Reaction from Materialism. — None the less, the 
seventeenth century offered certain striking arguments and 
certain fundamental problems to the conversation. Mate- 
rialism in education did not satisfy. In the reaction that 
followed its full exploitation the argument swung far to 
the other side, and we find ourselves once more dealing 
with one other aspect of the problem of method. If, the 
question may be supposed to run, no particular sort of 



EDUCATION AS MENTAL DISCIPLINE 285 

material nor all sorts put together are finally satisfactory, 
wherein lies their unsatisf actoriness ? That is to say, how 
is the decision against these highly recommended materials 
reached ? Who is the judge ; and what rights has this judge 
in the case? The answer is that the mind is the judge. 
But this changes the whole nature of the problem. If the 
mind is to determine what shall satisfy and what shall not, 
what is to become of all these old materials of education? 
What is to become of old systems and institutions? The 
answer is sweeping enough. These must all go, for we are 
in the midst of the Enlightenment, the Aufklarung, the 
clearing up of all old, dark places and the opening of all the 
world to the white light of truth ! In such a time as this 
the stage must be swept clean. The mind is henceforth to 
make its own world and to build its foundation upon evi- 
dent realities. Descartes (1596-1650) began it by calling 
all old experience into question and attempting to get a 
secure basis in his own criticised experiences. By doubt- 
ing he laid waste all the past, even his own; then by 
thought he began to build his new world. One thing he 
could not doubt — that he was able to doubt. On this he 
builds. "Cogito, ergo sum!" Nothing was to be taken 
into his new world merely because it had been in the old 
world ; it was stand the test of critical doubt. So the 
mind comes into its own ! 

But in England the process went even further. John 
Locke began that long movement of critical analysis which, 
carried on through Berkeley and Hume, first called all ex- 
ternal existence into question and reduced the whole world 
to idea, the construct of the mind ; and which finally called 
the mind itself into question and reduced it to a mere 
chain of associations. All the sacred symbolisms, ideas, 
and institutions of the past were dissolved in this crucible 
of critical analysis. Theoretically, nothing was left of the 



286 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

substance of the world. Theoretically, this was a com- 
plete house-cleaning, in which the old materials were swept 
out, leaving the house clean and bare. 

Education as Discipline of the Mind. — But practically, 
of course, men went on living. It was certainly a time of 
social, political, and industrial reconstruction; systems 
were crashing on every hand. Still men must go on liv- 
ing, and young people must go on growing up and getting 
ready to live. What sort of education shall be effective 
in a period such as this ? How can the evils of a transition 
period be overcome? What shall take the place of the 
substantial materials of the old world-systems? What, in- 
deed, but that one thing which even Hume could not wholly 
dissolve — the mind itself ! Let the mind become the center 
of educational activity ! 

In this way does Locke overcome the skepticism of his 
own philosophy and reach a more secure basis for the de- 
velopment of a very powerful and influential educational 
theory. The mental life of the individual becomes the all- 
important consideration. This inner life must be dis- 
ciplined, habituated, trained, until it has fitted itself to the 
conditions of existence. Tastes, capacities, endowment, are 
all to be consulted in this disciplinary procedure, and the 
whole process is to be sufficiently enjoyable to make it ac- 
ceptable to the pupil. None the less, Locke sternly de- 
clares : 

As the strength of the Body lies chiefly in being able to en- 
dure Hardships, so also does that of the Mind, and the great 
Principle and Foundation of all Virtue and Worth is placed in 
this: that a Man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross 
his own inclinations, and purely follow what Reason directs as 
best, though the appetite lean the other way. ... If, therefore, 
I might be heard, I would advise that, contrary to the ordinai7 
way, children should be used to submit their desires and go with- 
out their Longings, even from their very Cradles. 



EDUCATION AS MENTAL DISCIPLINE 287 

The best education is that which trains and disciplines 
and fortifies the mind. To be sure, certain materials will 
have to be used; but these will not be selected for their 
own sake, nor for their informational or ideal character. 
They will be selected wholly for their formal or formative 
values, for their worth and use in forming the mind, in 
disciplining the desires, and in bringing all the elements 
of the nature under the control of reason. If mathematics 
and grammar are chosen for these purposes, that choice 
does not rest on the same grounds as would dictate the 
choice of the same material by a classical realist. He 
would choose grammar, for example, because grammar is 
the gateway into the world of literature. Locke would 
choose it, however, because its nature makes it a pecul- 
iarly fine instrument for forming the mind. 

The Basis of Discipline. — At its best this doctrine of 
mental discipline is the noblest theory of education ever 
stated. At its worst, it is the most outrageous instrument 
for the deformation of the child's possibilities. Whether 
it shall be the one or the other depends upon the psycho- 
logical theory that surrounds the disciplinary process. A 
disciplined mind is the sort of mind needed in facing the 
urgencies and emergencies of the world of action. But 
there is present in the world a fundamental fallacy of this 
sort: "Here is a man who through his interest in a cer- 
tain task, through his loyalty to a central aim, through his 
enthusiasm for a future good, has secured the finest sort of 
mental discipline ; therefore let us now put before all chil- 
dren these same certain tasks, central aims, and future 
goods, and we shall thus secure the same splendid mental 
discipline for all individuals." The fallacy is one which 
will not be grasped without some special appreciation of 
the psychology of the case. It is of the same sort as that 
made by the later humanists when they tried to make the 



288 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

classics serve as a universal curriculum and so brought 
about the development of Ciceronianism. Such fallacies 
are, of course, evidences of a prepsychological age; if they 
exist to-day, they are survivals from such an age. 

The more genuine basis of discipline will appear in 
later stages of our discussion. Although the doctrines of 
Locke have been much disputed and in large measure dis- 
credited; although the educational movement which Locke 
fathered became the most influential factor in the develop- 
ment of educational practice in England and America and 
fixed upon both countries a conception which, in its baser 
form, became the excuse for all sorts of brutalities, includ- 
ing the famous dictum of the "Hoosier Schoolmaster" 
that "lickin' an' larnin' go together"; although at the 
present time the greatest educational task is that of escap- 
ing from the hard clutches of this conception of discipline 
without falling over into the equally undesirable doctrines 
of recent soft pedagogy — despite all these things, this dis- 
ciplinary doctrine of Locke represents a real advance upon 
the past, a genuine stage in the development of the think- 
ing-out of the educational problem. For through Locke's 
work educational discussion crosses over from the con- 
sideration of materials to the consideration of mind; the 
mind actually enters into educational discussion, and that is 
a great gain! To be sure, this mind is a curious sort of 
entity; but it is here. Despite all the efforts of the educa- 
tional materialists, it will remain, first as one of the ele- 
ments to be taken into account in the solution of the prob- 
lem of education, and finally as the one central factor 
around which all other aspects of the case revolve. 

For Locke himself the mind is at first simply a clean 
surface, a taiula rasa, on which nothing has been written, 
on which experience will slowly write the story of life. 
This writing will take place entirely through the senses. 



EDUCATION AS MENTAL DISCIPLINE 289 

"There is nothing in the mind which has not previously 
been in the senses." In this the mind is not primarily 
active, but passive. Learning is taking on impressions; 
mastery comes through large accumulation of impressions, 
as if bulk of information should be so impressive as to com- 
pel respect. There is little of feeling that the mind is to 
have any creative part in the making of the world. The 
whole of education is the formation of habit, especially 
habit of thought. Locke would have education be the 
"moral discipline of the intellect." "The business of 
education is not to make the young perfect in any of the 
sciences, but so to open and dispose their minds as may 
best make them capable of any, when they shall apply 
themselves to it." Yet there is a curious turning of the 
outlook here in Locke's thinking, as there is in all dis- 
cussions of the disciplinary following. It is rather naively 
assumed that the mind can be put through these passive 
performances for a number of years, during which these 
habits will have been built up; and that at some time un- 
determined, by some method or magic unexplained, the 
mind will become free, capable, inventive, masterful, even 
creative. "Would you have a man reason well, you must 
use him (make him used) to it betimes, exercise his mind 
in observing the connection of ideas and following them 
in train," For the purposes of this habit-forming exer- 
cise of the mind nothing is better than mathematics, 
"which therefore I think should be taught all those 
who have the time and opportunity, not so much to make 
them mathematicians as to make them reasonable crea- 
tures. ... I have mentioned mathematics as a way to 
settle in the mind a habit of reasoning closely and in 
train ; not that I think it necessary that all men should go 
deep into mathematics, but that having got the way of 
reasoning which that study necessarily brings the mind 



290 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

to, they might be able to transfer it to other parts of 
knowledge as they shall have occasion." 

It will be seen from these quotations that though the 
mind rather definitely emerges from its age-long submerg- 
ence in old materials, yet Locke intends that it shall have 
no easy time of it. "I do say that inuring children gently 
to suffer some degrees of pain without shrinking is a way to 
gain firmness to their minds and lay a foundation for 
courage and resolution in the future part of their lives." 
But it is a great gain to have given the mind even this hard 
chance. Eventually it will emerge into full expression. 
And this rather harsh attitude toward old knowledges and 
systems, which was expressed in the Enlightenment and in 
this doctrine of discipline in education, became the motive 
to revolt on the part of the leaders of the so-called "ro- 
mantic" movement, out of which came a more human, a 
more natural conception of living and of education. This 
more natural ideal of life and education found its most 
vigorous expression in Rousseau. To him we turn for the 
statement of the next phase of this winding argument. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

EDUCATION AS NATURAL GROWTH PROM WITHIN: 
ROUSSEAU 

We have already seen that there has been a fundamental 
conflict all through history as to the real nature of experi- 
ence. Two parties have stood forth now and again. The 
one represents the world as complete, intellectual, factual, 
in which education consists of taking on certain of these 
completed intellectual systems; the other represents the 
world as incomplete, changing, non-intellectual at the be- 
ginning, and in which education consists of the gradual 
development from within of an experience that can be de- 
pended upon to direct and control the destiny of the indi- 
vidual in the midst of changing conditions. The former 
seems to have been illustrated by the work of Plato, and 
especially by the structure of the world in the Middle 
Ages; the latter seems to have been illustrated by the 
conceptions of Socrates and the ideals of primitive Chris- 
tianity. We also come upon it again in the educational 
theory of Rousseau. That is to say, the general bearing 
of the doctrines of Rousseau is much the same as the bear- 
ing of the Socratie doctrine, or the simpler Christian 
teaching that life depends upon growth from within, rather 
than external institutionalizing. 

The Doctrines of Rousseau. — Rousseau (1712-1778) was 
born into a world that was already beginning to seethe 
with the underground impulses of revolution. His life 
was one long struggle to understand and to be understood. 
He never experienced anything of the nature of what 

291 



292 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Locke would have called mental discipline; and his life 
shows all the excesses that Locke would have predicted 
from such a deficient education. At the age of six his 
father read to him extensively from silly novels of the 
day. Later he himself read some valuable books which he 
came upon in a private library. But his childhood knew 
nothing of discipline ; and even the reading of the Parallel 
Lives of Plutarch and other books of like sort only served 
to stimulate his deeper sense of the injustice of the world of 
his time and to set more and more aflame his spirit of re- 
volt and his love of liberty. Hence as soon as Rousseau 
began to think for himself and to write, he became a revo- 
lutionist. Many years of wandering tended to intensify 
his feelings that civilization was heartless and hopelessly 
corrupt. His earliest writings deal with the origins of 
this heartlessness and corruption ; and gradually he comes 
to the belief that the only hope for humanity is to be found 
in a complete revolution in its social organization and its 
education. Civilization has become utterly corrupt; an 
artificial education has been largely responsible for this. 
Civilization must become natural once more, and education 
must also be made natural. This theory is, of course, in- 
volved in all sorts of contradictions, but aside from these 
there still stands forth a fairly definite conception of what 
natural education should be. This educational doctrine is 
set forth in his "Emile." 

There are four stages in the education of the boy "from 
the moment of his birth up to the time when, having be- 
come a mature man, he will no longer need any other guide 
than himself. ' ' These four stages are : 

(1) Infancy, during which the child is to be taken away 
from society and given a training under natural conditions. 
His parents are to do this work in very simple fashion, or 
if his parents cannot do it, some tutor who can gain the 



J 



EDUCATION AS NATURAL GROWTH 293 

child's confidence must be found. This first period of five 
years is given over to a purely physical training. 

(2) Childhood, covering the years from five to twelve, 
during which time he is to learn mostly by experiencing the 
consequences of what he does. This period is to be given 
over largely to physical education. The soul must be kept 
fallow ; there should be no moral training, no precepts, and 
no preaching. There must be plenty of exercise, since the 
boy is getting ready for the life of reason, and "in order 
to think, we must exercise our limbs, our senses, and our 
organs, which are the instruments of our intelligence." 

(3) Boyhood, — from twelve to fifteen. This is "the 
time of labor, instruction, and study," but limited to that 
which is merely useful. "Ask questions that are within 
his comprehension, but leave him to resolve them. Let him 
know nothing because you have told it to him, but because 
he has comprehended it himself ; he is not to learn science, 
but to discover it. If you ever substitute in his mind au- 
thority for reason, he will no longer reason." In this 
period the boy may have one book — the only book, it seems, 
fitted to make the boy reason without at the same time domi- 
nating his mental development and thus destroying his 
mental powers. That book is "Robinson Crusoe," "where 
all the natural needs of man are exhibited in a manner 
obvious to the mind of a child, and where the means of pro- 
viding for these needs are successively developed with the 
same facility." 

(4) Youth, — from fifteen to maturity. This is the time 
of moral and religious development. "We have formed 
his body, his senses, and his intelligence ; it remains to give 
him a heart. ' ' 

In a fifth part of "Emile" Rousseau sets forth the edu- 
cation of the girl who is to become the wife of the educated 
man. One quotation will suffice to show his attitude here : 



294 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

The whole education of women ought to be relative to men. 
To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves loved 
and honored by them, to educate them when young, to care for 
them when grown, to counsel them, to console them, to make life 
agreeable and sweet to them — these are the duties of women at 
all times and what should be taught them from infancy. 

That is to say, the education of the boy is to be active, con- 
structive, individual, and natural ; the education of the girl 
is to make her passive, receptive, and submissive. It M^as 
an age of revolution, but feminism was not one of the ele- 
ments in the creed of that revolution. 

The Sig-nificance of Rousseau. — Of course no one but an 
absolutist would think of finding ultimate truth in Rous- 
seau. His significance does not lie in any final solution of 
the problem of education or social organization, but in the 
new direction which he gave to the argument and in the 
new forces which his energetic presentations uncovered and 
released. He did not understand children, but he started 
the whole modern movement for the study of children. He 
cut the world free from its old dogmatisms about the mate- 
rials of education; he brought to an end the dominance of 
the doctrine of mental discipline; he showed that there is 
something deeper in human life, and therefore in educa- 
tion, than knowledge* or materials or systems or disciplines ; 
he brought back the world to something of the earlier Ren- 
aissance feeling for nature and renewed, socially and edu- 
cationally, the decadent faiths of the times in the worth of 
human life and the reality of the human soul. All the 
genuine streams of modern constructive educational think- 
ing may trace their courses back to Rousseau ; or, at least, 
one branch of their courses. 

Nature in the Doctrines of Rousseau. — Rousseau's 
thinking is never wholly consistent. He uses words freely 
and without exact meanings, as is almost inevitable in deal- 



EDUCATION AS NATURAL GROWTH 295 

ing with the mighty aspects of a great revolutionary epoch. 
His thinking is never conclusive ; it is suggestive. He uses 
the word nature, or natural, to express his general meaning 
and purpose in education. Since we are on the eve of the 
great awakening of the nineteenth century, with its won- 
derful searching out of nature, it will be well to see the ways 
in which the term "nature" is used in the second half of 
the eighteenth century. 

Rousseau uses the term "nature" in three distinct mean- 
ings. He would take the child out of the artificialities of 
the city to the realities of the country, where he will be 
close to nature ; he would turn from the artificial organiza- 
tion of human life in the modern world to the natural or- 
ganization which is found in more primitive societies; and 
he would turn from the artificialities of intellectualistic 
knowledge, as found in books or in conscious reason, to the 
natural, primitive, instinctive, unreasoned impulses and 
emotions. Thus we may see that to Rousseau nature means, 
first, the external world of undisturbed conditions — such a 
meaning as we have to-day in our term "nature-study"; 
it means, second, a certain primitive social order, such as 
we intend to convey by the term "natural tribes," as op- 
posed to the term "cultured nations"; and it means, third, 
a certain primitive feeling for life in the individual, as 
opposed to the more developed and sophisticated life of 
reason — such a meaning as we intend to convey when we 
speak of a certain individual as being "natural." 

That is to say, the term "nature" was used by Rous- 
seau in such ways as to include, first, the worlds of interest 
now studied by botanists, zoologists, etc. ; second, the worlds 
of interest now studied by sociologists, anthropologists, etc. ; 
and third, the worlds of interests now studied by psychol- 
ogists, etc. Now while this is, in a measure, due to the 
confusion of Rousseau's thinking, it is also due in large 



296 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

part to the modern recognition of the intimate relation- 
ships that exist between the intellectual and moral life of 
humanity and the whole range of universal nature. It is 
a premonition of the coming of a new doctrine of the origin 
of humanity. Under older doctrines of the creation of man, 
nature might be related to humanity in some remote de- 
gree, or in such a degree as man himself chose to recognize 
that relationship. But even in Rousseau's time the world 
is pressing swiftly forward toward the new belief that man 
himself is not a stranger in the earth, not one created and 
put into the world. The evolutionary doctrine is not far 
off ; and even now men dimly and confusedly feel that man 
is of the nature of the world, a product of the universal 
life-order, wrought out of the very substance of nature and 
intimately related to that nature in all its varied aspects. 

But at any rate, out from the influence of Rousseau flow 
three main streams of human interest, streams not wholly 
unlike those which flowed forth from the Renaissance — 
the natural sciences, whose field is nature in the first sense 
set forth above; the social sciences, whose field is nature 
in the second sense; and the psychological sciences, whose 
field is nature in the third sense set forth above. 

Education will take each and all of these directions. 
That is to say, just as in the post-Renaissance period, as 
we have seen, the various new aspects of the world each 
found its adherents and supporters, and therefore devel- 
oped its particular educational program, so, following upon 
the great revolutionary period of which Rousseau was, 
more than any other one man, the forerunner, the three 
aspects of nature which Rousseau confusedly emphasized 
became clearly distinguished and each became the central 
theme of educational development. The psychological 
aspect of nature was selected for development by a power- 
ful group of thinkers ; the natural science aspect was devel- 



EDUCATION AS NATURAL GROWTH 297 

oped by another equally or more powerful group ; and the 
third, or social science aspect, was developed after a long 
interval, but never perhaps by such powerful leaders. 

Soon, therefore, the problem of competing programs again 
arises, just as in the old days of the realisms. Which is the 
more important, the more vital, the more valuable, science 
or the humanities, chemistry or sociology? We find our- 
selves, as we shall see, back on the levels of the old material- 
istic conflicts. There is almost no inquiry as to which of 
these three aspects of nature suggested by Rousseau is pri- 
mary ; each makes its own insistence. We see developing a 
definite movement toward a psychological interpretation of 
all educational problems and a no less definite movement, 
though somewhat later in time, toward making the materials 
of natural science the primary element in education. Soon 
the social sciences will be clamoring for admission, and back 
of all these we see the old classicists quietly waiting in ma- 
terialistic gloom for the next rising of their old-time sun. 
The world is breaking up into fragments; parties are ap- 
pearing. Is there no unifying outlook in all the world? 

We turn first to the developments in the psychological 
direction. But before taking up that task in its specific as- 
pects we shall do well to sum up the argument and the 
achievements to date. We must remember our main thesis : 
that the race is educated by its experiences; and also our 
secondary thesis: that history is mainly an exploration of 
the hidden depths of human nature. If we now look back 
over the experiences of the race since the dawn of the mod- 
ern period, what new light has been thrown upon human na- 
ture by these intervening experiences ? 

We shall find that numerous important aspects of the 
mental life of man have come to light. Each of these as- 
pects may be looked upon as a fragment of the whole nature 
of man. Later we shall see how the psychological movement 



298 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

in education was just an effort to see the whole of human 
nature, or, perhaps, to see all these parts in relation to, and 
from the standpoint of, the whole of which they seemed to be 
parts. What, then, were these parts of human nature which 
had been slowly uncovered in these various movements? 
The answer must be suggestive, rather than conclusive or 
complete. But we may say that all the tendencies and 
movements in education — as well as in many other lines of 
development — in the modern period turned out to be really 
concerned with finding an approach to the mind. Thus, in 
the Renaissance we find a resurgence of the feelings which 
had been lost under the accumulations of centuries of barren 
institutionalism. Even in classic grammar there is an em- 
phasis upon memory and will and the conceptual powers. 
In social realism there is an emphasis upon certain social 
perceptions, or intuitions. In sense realism there is an em- 
phasis upon the sensory and perceptual powers. In the 
disciplinary conception of education there is found an as- 
sumption of a hypothetical mind, with faculties all existent, 
waiting only the discipline of sustained and vigorous use. 
In the growing inductive sciences there is an emphasis upon 
judgment, even though that emphasis was largely implicit. 
In the naturalism of Rousseau there was an emphasis upon 
the evolutionary doctrine of action and growth, in which 
the mind was assumed as a normal product of these normal 
processes of development. 

Thus we may see that the mind has actually appeared. 
But it has appeared either as a complete, though dull thing, 
as in the doctrines of Locke; or as a germinal term in a 
process of natural growth, as in the suggestions of Rousseau. 
In neither case does the need of a general psychology ap- 
pear. 

However, all these developments point in one large direc- 
tion. Even though fragmentary or fallacious, these devel- 



EDUCATION AS NATURAL GROWTH 299 

opments are parts of one general trend of growth; they 
are parts of the ultimate truth. What, then, is the whole 
truth? What is the actual nature of mind? What is the 
relation of these various parts of mental activity to the 
whole of mental life ? This becomes one of the great educa- 
tional questions of the nineteenth century. Closely related 
to this question, indeed, as a fundamental aspect of this 
question, come others. What is the relationship of (educa- 
tional) material to the mind? How shall a school be or- 
ganized so that the mind shall find its true significance, its 
proper relationship to the world, and its proper develop- 
ments within itself? 

All these questions, and many others within the realm 
of educational discussion proper and outside it, press in 
upon the consciousness of the eighteenth century after its 
barren years are over and its fruitful decades have come. 
Kant, one of the world's most constructive thinkers, gives 
his life to these problems. In his handling of these ques- 
tions the educational problem definitely and convincingly 
becomes a psychological problem, a problem whose ultimate 
or tentative solutions lie deep in the determinations of 
psychology. We turn now to the developments of this fully 
conscious psychological analysis. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM BECOMES PSyCHOLOGICAL 

If we should now run back briefly over our argument, we 
should find that when we plunged out of the rather fixed 
and limited materials and methods of social living and edu- 
cation that marked the Middle Ages into the more and 
more complicated conditions and materials of the modern 
period, we were not merely facing new materials; we were 
facing new kinds of materials which would, sooner or later, 
make us face as sincerely and squarely as might be the 
whole problem of method. We did not realize that we were 
to be driven from trench to trench in our efforts to hold 
fast old educational traditions and methods ; we even felt 
that the methods, the forms, of civilization were secure, and 
that all that remained to be done was the gradual organiza- 
tion of all new materials into these old forms. To be sure, 
we saw the Renaissance seemingly making things over ; but 
we contented ourselves with the thought that it was merely 
bringing back to earth something that had been lost along 
our way. We saw the Reformation hewing away at the 
structure of medievalism, and for a while we trembled lest 
the whole should fall ; but we were reassured presently when 
we saw Luther calmly retract and recant his radicalism, 
and return to the secure institutionalism of his new church. 
We heard for a while the voice of Bacon like "one crying 
in a wilderness" for the recognition of a new method with 
which to meet the new problems of the new period. But 
Bacon was ever an undependable man, and he was soon 
forgotten. When the realists appeared, — Comenius, Mil- 

300 



THE APPEARANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 301 

ton, and Montaigne, — with their emphasis on materials, we 
knew that the world had returned to its sanity and that the 
old structure of civilization was safe. 

But Descartes alarmed us with his doubt of all existence 
but his own power to doubt, Locke aroused us with his dis- 
solution of almost all the solid earth, and Berkeley dismayed 
us with his complete destruction of the world we know, — 
until we remembered that he was a bishop, and then we knew 
that it was merely one of his little jokes. But when Rous- 
seau undertook to destroy for us the very social order in 
which we live, and would insist that the only decent educa- 
tion is one that is secured outside civilized society, we found 
ourselves reduced to the terrible necessity of facing a doubt 
that has been with us through all this modern period, a 
doubt that even sometimes faced us in the ancient and me- 
dieval periods — after all, is this bald intellectualism, this 
materialism, this institutionalism the final statement of hu- 
man life ? If so, despite our boast of being modern, how do 
we really differ from the medievals ? At any rate, Rousseau 
has raised the issue. Politically, the deluge is upon us ; so- 
cially, we have come to the breakdown of conventionalities ; 
educationally, we are utterly lost. Realism, diseiplinism, 
naturalism, and all the other isms are all about us. Which 
way is life? Now, if ever in the history of the race, a mas- 
terful mind is needed to break through these conflicting 
isms, and to bring a new world-order, a new constructive 
expression of the fundamental basis of living. Perhaps 
more than one mind will be needed ; but some one must be- 
gin the task. And such a man appeared in the great Ger- 
man philosopher, Kant. 

Kant (1724-1804). — It is too long a story to tell how Kant 
undertook to organize the whole movement of human 
thought anew and to defend the reality of human culture 
against all its adversaries. But some little part of it must 



302 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

here be set forth, if the rest of the story is to have real 
significance. Several lines of influence converged in the 
making of Kant's point of view. His training was in line 
with the old orthodox tradition in philosophy — the rational- 
ism of the school of Leibnitz. Kant had learned from his 
teaching in this school that by the use of certain abstract 
principles of reason we can reach ultimate truth. Later 
he had come under the influence of the English philosophy, 
especially the teaching of Hume, and from that he had 
learned to doubt the power of reason to do the things 
claimed for it by the rationalists. Still later he had come 
under the influence of Rousseau's naturalism and the hu- 
manizing tendencies of the "romantic movement," as repre- 
sented by Lessing and Herder, He had also been a special 
student of the rising sciences. Thus we can see that his ex- 
perience had brought him into contact with all the leading 
streams of thought of his time. In him they all converged 
and met and fought out the preliminary conflict that was 
inevitable. The advances of humanity along intellectual 
lines have only been won by the most real and most strenu- 
ous conflicts; and here now, in Kant, all the diverse influ- 
ences of the modern period which we have been deviously 
following came to an issue. But more than these main lines 
seem involved here. The main lines of philosophical devel- 
opment converge in him ; to some extent the lines of social 
progress, as shown in criticism and revolution, are echoed in 
his thinking ; the influence of the various enlightenments are 
also apparent, and the long lines of educational develop- 
ment which, as we have seen, seem to have reached immov- 
able obstacles. All these, in greater or less degree, meet for 
the first time in Kant and fight out their battle. 

The answer is still in doubt. That answer covers many 
aspects of human life — intellectual, moral, esthetic, social, 
political, educational, and religious. We shall not go into 



THE APPEARANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 303 

these. Only one phase of the problem shall claim our at- 
tention here. Kant, himself, expressed the whole signifi- 
cance of his contribution to philosophy in a brief phrase 
which may serve to show us our own pathway through this 
maze. Kant calls attention to the fact that in the Middle 
Ages astronomy had conceived the universe as centering in 
the earth ; the sun, the moon, the planets, and the fixed stars 
had all revolved about the earth as a center. Then came 
Copernicus with his revolution. The sun becomes the cen- 
ter of a solar system, and the earth revolves about the sun, 
as do also all the other planets of our system. Now Kant 
uses this "Copernican revolution in astronomy" to illus- 
trate what he calls his own "Copernican revolution in 
thought. ' ' We may paraphrase his statements as follows : 

Kant's "Copernican Revolution in Philosophy." — "In 
all discussions of the nature of the world and of human 
experience, hitherto, it has always been assumed that the 
world was created and finished in a final form, and that all 
objects of knowledge exist in this final form; and that, 
therefore, all our knowledge comes of discovering just how 
these finished objects appear. All our knowledge conforms 
to, or copies, these finished objects. That is to say, the ob- 
jects of the world exist in final forms, and the mind in com- 
ing to know these objects is molded by them, conforms to 
them, comes to be like them, in some sense. 

"But every attempt from this point of view to explain 
how we can extend our knowledge beyond the range of im- 
mediate experience, i.e., how we can get beyond objects, has 
ended in failure. Therefore the time has now come to ask 
a critical question : ' Should we not be nearer the truth if 
we were to suppose that the world and the objects of knowl- 
edge are not really finished, but that in the process by means 
of which the mind becomes acquainted with any object, the 
object changes so as to fit into the mind's capacities for 



304 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

knowing ? ' That is to say, our point of view is this : The 
mind is a system of knowing ; every object that comes into 
knowledge, or into the mind, must fit into the mind 's system ; 
hence every such object must change in the process of be- 
coming known, and must conform to the mind's power to 
TiJiow, or else remain unknown. 

''Our suggestion is similar to that of Copernicus in as- 
tronomy, who, finding it impossible to explain the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that they 
turned round the spectator, tried whether he might not suc- 
ceed better by supposing the spectator to revolve, and the 
stars to remain at rest. Let us make a similar experiment 
in our study of the way in which we come to know objects. 
If our minds, our capacities for knowledge, our perceptions, 
were really determined by the objects that we come to know, 
we could never know anything beyond the range of our 
immediate perceptions; but if, on the other hand, the ob- 
jects of sensation and perception change, are modified in the 
process of learning, if they do conform to the character 
of our minds, then the whole problem is easy. ' ' 

Well, it was not so easy as Kant supposed; but he had 
found a real clue to the future developments in philosophy, 
psychology, and education, — and, indeed, in all other human 
lines. From this time forward mind shall be no longer the 
plaything of materials; it shall be no more a mere tabula 
rasa, to be filled by the rigid will of some disciplinarian; 
it shall not even be mere wild and natural primitive im- 
pulses, which may develop their own anarchic characteristics 
unhindered by the experiences of the past. No doubt there 
will be those — doubtless there are some, even still — who are 
innocent of any acquaintance with this fundamental revolu- 
tion in philosophy, psychology, and education, those who 
still consider mind from the old seventeenth century stand- 
point. 



THE APPEARANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 305 

But all philosophy, psychology, and educational theory 
that knows the history of its own development realizes that 
mind is the central factor in the problems of to-day. Let 
us see this more clearly in the one field of education. 

The Convergence of Educational Movement in Kant's 
Revolution. — In the two centuries preceding Kant there had 
been, as we know, three general solutions of the educational 
problem. These were, of course, in addition to the actual 
traditional practices of the ordinary schools and the folk- 
way education that still went on in the common living. 
These three general solutions were as follows : 

(a) The various realists had solved the problem by 
means of various types of materials, each of which was sup- 
posed to be the most valuable of all the possible sorts of 
materials known. 

(b) The formalists, or disciplinarians, had set up a sort of 
hypothetical mind, which was to be disciplined into shape 
and use by certain selected materials and by certain hard- 
ening experiences. 

(c) The naturalists had solved the problem by setting 
forth how individual personality could be developed, if the 
child were freed from the artificialities of civilization and 
given a real chance to grow up in freedom. 

Now each of these three solutions presents something of 
genuine value, and the third presents something that is 
essentially new in this age, though not utterly new in the 
world's experience. But each of these three solutions is 
afflicted with a fatal ignorance, and all of them almost in the 
same degree — they are all ignorant of the activities of the 
mind which is the real subject of these solutions. None of 
them knows much, if anything, of the mental processes that 
are involved in mental development, or in the growth and 
enrichment of experience. There is, of course, a movement 
toward this central problem, so much so, indeed, that 



:m DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

whereas, Locke, for example, still sees the child as an object 
to be educated, Rousseau makes the child in some measure, 
the subject of his own education, not completely acted upon, 
but acting. Yet even Rousseau scarcely gets beyond this 
bulk statement of the case. 

But Kant, in his turn, raises the whole problem out of 
the realm of mere materials and external disciplines and 
undisturbed developments of natural capacities. He does 
not, indeed, set forth a solution of the educational problem 
in terms that are clear and final. But his ''Copernican 
revolution" can be applied to the solution of this problem; 
it will be applied by later educational theorists ; and when 
so applied, the "solution" will be somewhat as follows: 

"The mind is central in any process of learning; objects, 
things, the world of experience itself, conies into being in 
the process of becoming known. Learning does not consist 
of conforming the mind to an object that is already in 
existence ; it consists of creating and constructing an object, 
objects, things, a world. Hence the real educational prob- 
lem, when it is raised to this level of conscious understand- 
ing, becomes : How does experience actually proceed in the 
construction of its own world ? ' ' 

If it may be objected that Kant never set forth the prob- 
lem of education in this way, the answer is that this is the 
implication of his own "Copernican revolution," and that 
sooner or later such a statement of the problem will be 
made; and, further, that without such a statement the sig- 
nificance of modern movements in educational thinking must 
remain forever hidden. 

This statement of the problem, when it has been fully ap- 
prehended by the teacher, makes all further consideration of 
the problem proceed from the inside. "What is actually 
going on in the mind of the pupil, and what actual changes 
are taking place in his experience ? " Of course the answers 



THE APPEARANCE OF PSYCHOLOGY 307 

to these and all similar problems are to be found not in 
idealistic speculations, but in the long and patient inquiries 
into the fields of psychology, inquiries which have marked 
the succeeding century. The tragedy of educational history 
of the nineteenth century is this : In the universal recon- 
struction that the revolutions forced upon the world at the 
beginning of the century the educational problem became 
recognized as one of the most fundamental social problems ; 
and in the intellectual reconstruction that was actually be- 
gun by Kant the educational problem became recognized as, 
in large measure, a problem in psychological analysis. Yet 
in the face of these two tremendous facts few social, politi- 
cal, or even psychological leaders have been interested in 
the deeper problems of education, and most teachers have 
been utterly innocent of any understanding of the develop- 
ments in psychology or the tremendous importance of 
psychology in the understanding of the problem. 

The world has been passing through a series of profound 
revolutions since the days when Rousseau wrote his 
"Emile." These revolutions have affected our whole po- 
litical structure, and our whole industrial organization is in 
the process of reconstruction. Religious life has not felt 
the effects of this revolutionary influence in any marked 
degree, save in the direction of certain disintegrating ten- 
dencies; for the religious revolution failed to realize its 
early aims, and the religious world settled back into a sort of 
futile contentment. The actual organization of democratic 
nations has come about ; but the logic of democracy has not 
yet found its place in the control of education. The revo- 
lution has not yet penetrated to our educational procedure. 
The implications of the social and intellectual revolutions of 
the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries have been 
wearing upon our educational traditions for a generation; 
but those traditions die hard. We shall see hereafter how 



308 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the traditions of the prepsychological ages find much sub- 
stantial support in certain belated groups, or parties, whose 
members have received the benefits of many wonderful de- 
velopments in certain fields of modern knowledge, but who 
are, none the less, pitifully ignorant of the no less wonderful 
developments in these more central aspects of human ex- 
perience. We may even see how scientists may come to be 
peculiarly obstinate obstacles to the developments of psy- 
chology, and, therefore, to a more effectual education. 
Especially shall we see that in practically all educational 
practice the child is still treated as being a passive recipient 
of the world of nature and culture. Kant's wonderful con- 
ception that the mind shall be central in the active task of 
world building, that creative activity should be the true 
mark of experience-development, is lost to view. It is the 
Socratic doctrine returned to earth. But was not Socrates 
put to death ; and did not his doctrines die with him ? We 
shall see ! 



CHAPTER XXXI 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OP EDUCATION 
PESTALOZZI 

Since Kant there have been two fundamental tendencies 
in the field of educational discussion, aside from the com- 
mon run of traditional practice which has gone on and still 
goes on, but is little affected by theoretical discussions. On 
the one hand, of course, such discussion has been constantly 
determined and controlled by the growing insight which 
the study of psychology has given ; that is to say, one of the 
two tendencies has had as its chief guide the growing sci- 
ence of psychology, and it has attempted to become con- 
sciously psychological. This tendency has gradually be- 
come more and more aware of its problem or problems, and 
has gradually worked for a more complete elaboration of its 
analysis and its tools, until now it seems to be entering upon 
a stage wherein it will be almost as sure of its functions as 
any of the applied sciences, — though, of course, it is by no 
means as certain of its methods, or even of its data, as are 
these other less personal but more objective lines of con- 
structive effort. On the other hand, however, there is still 
a large measure of educational discussion that goes on prac- 
tically oblivious to the fact that psychology exists. It 
works over old materials and concepts, or new ones, in good 
seventeenth century fashion; it sticks to the old traditions 
and methods, as if Kant's "Copernican revolution in think- 
ing" had never been suggested. Such unintelligent discus- 
sion muddles things immeasurably. It is ignorant of its 
own ignorance, being intelligent only in some department 

309 



310 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

of knowledge, science, language, or application of knowl- 
edge, and caring nothing for the theory of its own practices 
or the intelligent criticism of those practices which psychol- 
ogy could offer. Among representatives of this tendency 
psychology is sometimes accepted as profitable material of 
education — stuff to be learned. But it has no bearing on 
the processes of learning ! Theory, the one means by which 
thinking has been liberated from the control of old fables in 
the fields of physics and chemistry and the sciences gener- 
ally, is looked upon with suspicion as a means of liberating 
men's practices in those fields where liberation is most neces- 
sary, — that is, in the field of education. And this tendency 
is frequently found among leading thinkers, — scientists who 
in their own special lines have become wonderfully liber- 
ated. One of the greatest obstacles to educational progress 
to-day is found in the failure of many leading educators to 
recognize the fact that psychology bears something of the 
same relationship to education that physics bears to engi- 
neering. 

We must first follow out briefly the preliminary course 
of this new psychological movement in education, in order 
that we may catch some glimpse of the problems that are 
still to be solved. Three great names appear in close rela- 
tionship — Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Froebel. 

Pestalozzi. — Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) 
was the first notable representative of this new tendency 
to consider educational problems from within the pupil's 
experience. He was more than a teacher in the schools. He 
was a public educational reformer, a social leader in the 
revolutionary reconstructions of the eighteenth and nine- 
teenth centuries, and a Swiss patriot — all in one, if this 
seems not too incredible. He first thought of becoming a 
religious leader, but he failed in his efforts to conduct the 
conventional religious services. He tried law, but he broke 



THE EFFORTS OF PESTALOZZI 311 

down in health. Having some acquaintance with Rousseau, 
he decided to return to nature. At the age of twenty-one 
he burned all his books and turned farmer! He married 
at twenty-three. His little son, Jacobli, became his text- 
book, his laboratory, and his experimental school. Taking 
Rousseau's root ideas as his starting point, he worked away 
in the obscurity of his farm at the task of thinking through 
some of the problems that Rousseau had merely sighted. 
Then the children of the poor in his district attracted him, 
and he sought means of helping them to some contact with 
knowledge. Later, becoming poorer than the poor whom he 
was trying to help, he wrote the great book which is his 
finest contribution — "Leonard and Gertrude," a story of 
rural life in which he sets forth his views on social and edu- 
cational reforms. Still later he became the keeper of a 
poorhouse for a time, hoping to find a chance to carry out 
his experiments with the children of the poor. But this 
lasted a very short while. Then he became a teacher in a 
school at Burgdorf, — on suspicion. Here for five years he 
worked with little children from five to eight years old, and 
achieved success and fame. Here he wrote and published 
"How Gertrude Teaches Her Children," which sets forth 
most fully the fundamental conceptions upon which his 
work was based. After 1805 he went to Yverdun, where for 
a number of years he continued his brilliant work. Then 
came many years of private and public misunderstandings, 
and at last the breakdown of a brilliant career. 

Pestalozzi's Educational Aims. — Pestalozzi was not, as 
we have said, merely a teacher in the schools. He was edu- 
cator, reformer, and patriot, and he sought to deal with 
education as a great social function. He would extend the 
provisions for education to all the people. The lower classes, 
he insists, have "precisely the same right to enjoy the light 
of the sun" as have the upper classes. Not only that alone. 



312 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

The only way society can be saved from its poverty, its mis- 
ery, and its moral degradation is by extending education 
to every individual child. But this great social ideal would 
be the most formal and barren of useless dreams unless the 
educational institutions and methods were made over in 
conformity with the finer ideals of the times. Hence Pes- 
talozzi undertakes the appalling task of psychologizing edu- 
cation. He has the "natural" spirit of Rousseau ; and with 
it he has something of the psychological insight of the best 
leaders of that line of development, especially Kant and 
Fichte. And he starts upon the long task, not even to-day 
fully begun, with the joy of certain achievement. His edu- 
cational creed has been summarized by his biographer, Morf , 
in the following formal statements : 

Observation is the foundation of instruction. 

Language must be connected with observation. 

The time for learning is not the time for judgment and criti- 
cism. 

In each branch, instruction must begin with the simplest ele- 
ments, and proceed gradually by following the child's develop- 
ment; that is, by a series of steps that are psychologically con- 
nected. 

A pause must be made at each stage of the instruction awf- 
fieiently long for the child to get the new matter thoroughly into 
his grasp and under his control. 

Teaching must follow the path of development, and not that 
of dogmatic exposition. 

The individuality of the pupil must be sacred for the teacher. 

The chief aim of elementary instruction is not to furnish the 
child with knowledge and talents, but to develop and increase the 
powers of his mind. 

To knowledge must be joined power; to what is known, the 
ability to turn it to account. 

The relation between master and pupil, especially so far as 
discipline is concerned, must be established and regulated by love. 



THE EFFORTS OF PESTALOZZI 313 

Instruction must be subordinated to the higher end of educa- 
tion.^ 

Pestalozzi works for the "development of human nature 
and the harmonious cultivation of its powers and talents." 
He finds that use — exercise — is the only means of develop- 
ment these powers possess. Work — activity of a construct- 
ive sort — is the surest of all means of growth, for "man is 
much more truly developed through that which he does than 
through that which he learns." But especially human na- 
ture in the child must come into actual contact with the 
realities of the world of experience, must get its actual im- 
pressions from real experiences, must have its intuitions cul- 
tivated by feeling the impress of the physical world-order 
on its physical nature, the impress of the moral world-order 
on its moral nature, etc. This actual intuition of the real- 
ities of the world on the part of the child must be fixed in 
experience by further observation and by exercise. Words 
stand in the way of education, dulling the powers of the 
mind and destroying the sensibility of the mind to the reali- 
ties of the world. Sense-experiences must always form the 
basis of all lasting education. Yet at last these "expe- 
riences must be clearly expressed in words, or otherwise 
there arises the same danger that characterizes the dominant 
word teaching," i.e., lack of understanding of words, and 
hence the erroneous use of words. 

In a word, Pestalozzi, interested in nature, uses the ma- 
terials of the sense-world in his teaching. But whereas the 
older sense-realists had attempted to store the minds of their 
pupils with the materials of nature, Pestalozzi, following the 
lead of Rousseau in the recognition of the self-activity of 
the child and the lead of Kant in (his "Copernican revo- 
lution") in his recognition of the creative activity of the 
mind in all learning processes, attempts to build up nature 

1 Quoted by Graves: "Great Educators of Three Centuries," p. 136. 



314 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

in the experience of each of his pupils by the working of 
their own creative minds. He works from the inside, not 
from the outside of the minds of his pupils. Nature is not 
a finished product to begin with ; it is the final product in 
the experience of his pupils. The final form of knowledge 
is acquired through the development of ideas. Ideas grad- 
ually emerge out of a "swimming sea of confused sense- 
impressions"; they become definite through critical contrast 
with objects and other ideas. 

All this is based on the idea of self-activity and self -devel- 
opment. The teacher's real business is to give a "helping 
hand to the instructive efforts after self-development." 
The child must learn how to observe carefully, since sense- 
perception is the basis of all mental development, especially 
of judgment and thought. "We get knowledge by our own 
investigations, not by endless talk about the results of art 
and science." After sense-perception, analysis of experi- 
ence must be developed. "We put our children on the road 
which the discoverer of the subject himself took." 

All in all, Pestalozzi rises rather fully to certain con- 
structive details of the great psychological task. It is true 
that some of his efforts are more or less unreal. For ex- 
ample, his plan to psychologize education was rather fan- 
tastic, at least, in so far as it involved the reducing of all the 
materials of education to psychological equivalents in the 
experiences of children. Such a proposal is very fascinat- 
ing. But as a predigesting of educational materials it is 
open to the objection that meets all proposals to feed the 
world on predigested materials. It is not the predigestion 
of materials that is wanted ; it is the proper understanding 
of, and adaptation to, the whole process of nutrition. 

The Return to Materialism. — But this proposal, while it 
holds a certain valuable suggestion, is open to one other 
almost fatal objection: it seems to turn back upon materials 



THE EFFORTS OF PESTALOZZI 315 

once more. It may be but the resurgence of that older ma- 
terialism which was the favored solution for the educational 
problem in the seventeenth century. To be sure, this 
psychologizing of the materials seems to take mind into 
account ; and it does, too, in a way, but not in an adequate 
way. Or, rather, it takes mind into account in a round- 
about way. For, on the whole, this conception of Pesta- 
lozzi seems to use the mind merely as a sort of agency to 
selection of the proper materials for education. At any 
rate, we see his work gradually deteriorate, until once again 
materials are dominant. Pestalozzi, himself, recognized the 
danger of this return to the old ways. He says : "I cannot 
prevent the forms of my method from having the same fate 
as all other forms, which inevitably perish in the hands of 
men who are neither desirous nor capable of grasping their 
spirit." But the danger was not that others would not 
appreciate the method at its full value, though of course 
that happened in large measure. Pestalozzi, himself, did 
not escape from this formal tendency toward the emphasis 
upon old materials. In particular he emphasized the teach- 
ing of words, plain lists of words, though his method had 
been largely a revolt against the mere teaching of words; 
and he came, through a fallacious over-emphasis upon the 
doctrine of proceeding "from the simple to the complex," 
to a very curious belief that the whole process of education 
could be mechanized, that is, reduced to a system that should 
be as accurate as a piece of mechanism. The former of 
these tendencies shows Pestalozzianism as inculcating words 
that run far beyond the experience of the learner, which 
Pestalozzi justifies by saying that the "gain of what at this 
age is so complete a knowledge of lists of names, so various 
and comprehensive, is immeasurable in facilitating the sub- 
sequent instruction of children." This is materialistic for- 
malism of the finest sort. The latter of these tendencies 



316 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

shows Pestalozzi attempting to organize "every branch of 
popular knowledge or talent" in the form of a "graduated 
series of exercises, the starting point of which was Mathin 
everybody's comprehension, and the unbroken action of 
which, always exercising the child's powers without ex- 
hausting them, resulted in a continuous, easy, and attract- 
ive progress in which knowledge and the application of 
knowledge were always intimately connected." 

It would not be fair, however, to class Pestalozzi with the 
old sense-realists. He was primarily interested in those 
materials of education which come into experience through 
the senses by observation. His interest in words goes only 
so far as to suggest that the possession of long lists of words 
in the mind will be very helpful in dealing with the ma- 
terials which observation brings to the mind for use. He 
feels with the sense-realists that the best education comes 
from the materials which they emphasized. But he has 
gone far enough beyond them to want these sense-materials 
to come into the mind in a natural manner, that is, psycho- 
logically. Hence he would chart out the mind as much as 
that is possible ; then he would chart out these desirable ma- 
terials, proceeding in them from the simple to the more 
complicated ; and finally he would relate all these materials 
in definite fashion to the mental processes in such detailed 
and simple fashion that "schools would gradually almost 
cease to be necessary. ' ' 

The work of Pestalozzi was a strong, constructive, heroic 
effort of a brave and patient life. He accomplished much 
by his inspiring work as teacher and by his insight into the 
processes of experience. But his own training was not com- 
plete enough to enable him to win to the far goal. Tradi- 
tion was too firmly rooted in him to be easily overcome, and 
he broke down under the strain of years of privation and 
misunderstanding. He rose to high fame, and worthily so ; 



THE WORK OF HERBART 317 

but he fell to partial obscurity and defeat before he died. 
On the side of social reformation his work had broad and 
lasting influence ; and he did much to popularize the move- 
ment for industrial education and the social care of juvenile 
delinquents. In an incidental way his theories affected the 
general curriculum, effecting changes in the teaching of the 
languages and the study of nature. But he did not suc- 
ceed in psychologizing education. Indeed, it may almost be 
asserted that his doctrines played into the materialistic tra- 
dition by showing how close the materials of the mind can be 
made to relate themselves to mental processes. At any rate, 
Pestalozzianism is one of the many isms from which educa- 
tional theory and practice must escape. More work along 
all lines, more analysis of the psychological and logical con- 
ditions under which learning takes place, will be necessary 
before the whole problem appears and the broader lines of 
solution begin to develop. The many-sided argument runs 
on from age to age ; but intelligence is burrowing deeper 
into the task. Nothing less than the whole intellectual- 
moral life of humanity is the problem, and the process of 
development of that life is the goal. Pestalozzi contributes 
his share to the conversation and passes on. We turn to the 
next worker in the line of psychological analysis. 

THE WORK OF HERBART AS EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST 

The second constructive educational thinker who followed 
the new psychological trend was Johann Friedrich Herbart 
( 1776-1841 ) . Herbart came under the influence of the new 
movement in his university career at Jena. It was not 
Kant, however, who first influenced him, but Fichte. The 
latter was himself a follower first in the new idealistic move- 
ment, but later became a constructive thinker in his own 
way. Herbart became a professional philosopher, as well as 
an educational psychologist, and this experience shows its 



318 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

influence upon all his work. His aims are more philosophi- 
cal (as opposed to being merely psychological) than are 
those of Pestalozzi. Indeed, he felt it necessary to criticize 
the rather raw sense-methods of Pestalozzi. He considered 
the ordinary observation which Pestalozzi esteemed so highly 
as being of uncertain value, because the undisciplined senses 
(as he argued) were scarcely capable of giving us reliable 
truth. He would correct these possibilities of error by 
means of an extreme discipline of the senses, which was to 
be secured, for example, by the serious study of mathemati- 
cal forms. 

Herbart's Educational Aims. — Herbart believed that 
education was worthy of becoming a science in its own 
right. He felt keenly the rather superficial views of most 
educators of the past. He saw that most of the educational 
thinking of the past had been largely made up of uncon- 
sidered generalities on the basis of naive assumptions. In 
other words, he saw that educational thinking had been 
largely devoted to making explicit the unintelligent prac- 
tices of the folkways of the past. Herbart would make 
educational procedure fully and wholly intelligent. Its 
aim must be an intelligent one — the actual development 
of a moral personality. Its methods must go far beyond 
the common practice, on the one hand, and the doubtful 
theories of recent writers, on the other. Common prac- 
tice was fallacious, of course, because it assumed that mor- 
ality was a more or less unpredictable element, not to be 
attained by any particular exertion on the part of the 
teacher. Locke was a bad guide in that his whole scheme 
of education was merely the cultivation of the conventional 
man of the world, who, of course, would not rise above the 
levels of convention. Rousseau was a bad guide because his 
whole scheme of education looked to the development of a 
natural man who, of course, should "repeat from the be- 



THE WORK OF HERBART 319 

ginning the succession of evils already overcome" by the 
race in its progress toward civilization. Herbart would 
substitute for all such inadequate conceptions and practices 
the method of instruction. He would lay out before the 
teacher the whole structure of the mental life, with all its 
possibilities, and he would have a teacher who could then 
succeed in introducing into the full workings of that human 
mental life all the elements that should be needed in the 
final summation of a complete moral personality. He would 
have all these results come as the natural working of the 
principles of instruction carried on according to the real 
nature of the individual. 

Herbart 's Conception of Method. — The moral ideal de- 
mands a certain concentration of effort toward a rather dis- 
tinct goal. In order to make sure that this effort should 
not result in a narrowly dogmatic type of character, Herbart 
insists that education must maintain and develop "many- 
sidedness of interest." Herbart does not seem to have 
based this demand upon the modern conception of many- 
sidedness of native capacity, — such a conception had not yet 
appeared as a working guide, — although he does insist that 
the early education of the child can best be secured through 
the use of such materials as the Odyssey. Rather, he bases 
the possibility of the development of a many-sided interest 
on the working of reflection. Reflective thought must be so 
developed as to make sure that life shall have many aspects, 
many references, and many interests. 

How shall this reflective thought be thus secured ? Her- 
bart has worked out a definite, formal method by which to 
make sure of this development. Originally this method was 
based on four distinctive steps in the process of thinking, 
as follows : clearing up of ideas already in the mind, pres- 
entation of new ideas, association of the new ideas with the 
old mental contents, and application of these new contents 



320 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

in practice. We shall see later the full results of this pro- 
cedure. We must now follow Herbart's psychology a little 
further. 

Herbart is distinctly what may be called an intellectualist. 
That is to say, for him ideas are the primary characteristic 
of the mind — the mind being in one sense just a series of 
masses of ideas, each of which, with more or less persistence 
and regularity, occupies the center of consciousness, rising 
above the threshold of consciousness for a time and then 
falling below that threshold. Ideas are the prime reality, 
the real force of the mind and of the world. Will, itself, is 
but a sort of special form of intellectual activity, as are also 
interest, feeling, and desire. In such a system it will be 
readily seen that the chief problem in moral development is 
that of bringing the proper ideas into the mind, getting 
them into the circle of thought, since in this way these ideas 
would thus get in their work upon the will. But ideas are 
forces, and those that are in the mind are in constant battle 
for the possession of consciousness, fighting with each other 
for the central position of power and of course joining 
hands, as we might say, in their common fight to prevent the 
intrusion of any other ideas not distinctly related in charac- 
ter to those already within the mind. That is to say, Her- 
bart conceives of these ideas as being actively engaged in 
the fight for a place in the mind, combining with each other 
for mutual help and attacking each other, their modes of 
combination being regular and ascertainable. He even goes 
60 far as to work out those modes of relationships in exact 
mathematical terms. 

Apperception. — This discussion will help to make clear 
the celebrated doctrine of apperception, which two decades 
ago seemed to offer the long-sought clue to the educational 
millennium. Herbart conceives of the mind as being thus 
constituted of masses of ideas, each with its own character- 



THE WORK OF HERBART 321 

istic nature. These various masses of ideas welcome other 
ideas which seem to possess the same general character, and 
which will therefore strengthen the fight of these former 
ideas for their dominant position in the mind. These masses 
of old ideas not only welcome all new ideas of a similar char- 
acter, but they take in the new ideas ; they assimilate them 
and make them part of the existent mass. So that every 
new idea taken into the mind swells its particular existent 
mass of ideas and makes easier the entrance of other ideas 
of the same general type ; and, by the same token, this makes 
more difficult the entrance of ideas of another type. These 
previously existent masses of ideas are the famous "apper- 
ception masses." They welcome, assimilate, and organize 
into themselves the new ideas. They thus give vital sig- 
nificance to all new materials taken into the mind, in that 
way adding to perception. 

There is a certain obvious value in this doctrine of apper- 
ception : it shows the tremendous importance of building up 
proper apperception masses in the experience of the child. 
If the present contents of the mind have such determining 
influence upon later contents, educational destiny may al- 
most be said to depend upon the early beginnings of the 
process. But there is another item of equal importance. 
Ideas not only welcome some ideas ; they also fight the en- 
trance of other ideas. And this fight against certain new 
ideas may not be due to any moral difference in the nature 
of the new ideas, though doubtless this is frequently the 
ease. The reason for the attitude of conflict upon the part 
of the old ideas toward the new may be due to a wide gap 
in the logical organization of the new, so that even though 
the new ideas are distinctly of the same general character 
as the old, yet they are not recognized by the old. They 
have no logical similarity of characteristics, and they are 
fought on the general ground that always identifies the nn- 



322 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

like with dislike. This indicates the extreme importance of 
making the curriculum correspond to the stages of develop- 
ment of the child's experience. And this leads to several 
striking results. In the first place, and in its smaller aspect, 
the materials of the curriculum must be arranged in an 
ascending scale of growing complexity, corresponding to the 
probable complexities in the experiences of growing child- 
hood. In the second place, and from the larger point of 
view, it is likely that this proper organization of the studies 
will show that the best presentation is that which follows, — 
at least in great epochs, — the history of the development 
of those studies in the experience of the race. Thus ap- 
pears the celebrated theory of culture epochs, which finds in 
the history of the race the clue to the proper organization 
of the subject-matter of the modern school curriculum. 
This theory is, of course, also closely related to the theory 
of recapitulation, according to which the child develops a 
series of native activities or capacities or instincts in the 
same general order in which those capacities were devel- 
oped in the history of the race. But the whole topic is far 
too extensive for this present treatment. 

One summary statement must conclude this topic. Her- 
bart himself sums up the whole matter of apperception in 
its relation to the main aim of education, that is, to morality, 
in the sentence, ' ' Instruction will form the circle of thought, 
and the circle of thought the character." And of such a 
system of psychology and education it were not altogether 
difficult to understand why a certain leading Herbartiau 
should say, ' ' Teachers ought to accept it as true and to act 
under the assumption that it is true, whether it is true or 
not." 

Some Results. — Herbart is remembered as psychologist 
and metaphysician, as well as educator. Indeed, it is likely 
that his educational doctrines are but elements in his gen- 



THE WORK OF HERBART 323 

eral metaphysic, and that they will suffer the fate of his 
general philosophy. There is a certain moral idealism in his 
teaching that cannot be escaped. And there is a certain 
pious hope that he has found the clue to mental life, and 
hence to instruction. But the doctrine of apperception has 
passed out of the psychologies; the word is scarcely to be 
found in the books of to-day. That does not mean that what 
Herbart tried to describe under that name does not exist. 
It simply means that it is at present much better described 
from another point of view and under another title. Her- 
bart 's psychology was associative in its basic features. In 
an associative psychology ideas merely attach themselves to 
each other like beads on a string; there is no necessary in- 
teraction among them. Herbart felt the unreality of this 
conception ; but the evolutionary conception of an actively 
reconstructive mental life had not developed. If ideas were 
to have internal relationships to each other, some special 
means of action must be set forth. Perception, itself, being 
but the means by which ideas became associated together, 
something must be added to perception to bring them into 
organic interrelationship. Hence we get apperception, or 
something added to perception. To-day, however, percep- 
tion is itself described as an active process which involves 
all the functions of the mind in the interpretation of new ex- 
periences. Hence perception now performs all the func- 
tions covered by Herbart 's apperception. 

Herbart 's psychology is material for criticism to-day. 
Herbart 's formal method has suffered in a somewhat similar 
manner. To him, as we have seen, formal method implied a 
following of the generalized stages of development by which 
the mind takes into itself new materials. That is to say, 
Herbart himself always remained a psychologist in his han- 
dling of the problems of education. But his most ardent 
followers, chief of whom have been English and American 



324 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

thinkers, have tended to fall away from the psychological 
point of view and to once more become materialists in the 
seventeenth century sense. That is to say, in the hands of 
his followers method has largely ceased to be stages of de- 
velopment in the learning process and has become, instead, 
stages of development in the organization of materials. In 
place of the four formal steps by which the mind appre- 
hended the materials of the world and applied them to the 
larger uses of life, we find in the later Herbartians five 
formal steps in the development of the materials of the les- 
son — preparation, presentation, association, generalization, 
and application. It has been frequently set forth that few 
people seem to have the power of dealing thoroughly with 
the problem of method. The greater part fall away from 
that rather abstract problem to the concrete problem of 
reorganizing a curriculum in such way as to fulfil the de- 
mands of method as they understand it. The organization 
of the mind comes to be assumed as explicit and settled. 
The really constructive task is that of organizing the ma- 
terials of knowledge so that these will correspond with the 
organization of the mind. The Herbartians did not escape 
this fate. 

But the futility of such a procedure has been rather 
clearly recognized. As evidence of this it may be pointed 
out that in the late decades of the nineteenth century, under 
the stimulus of the Herbartian movement in America, the 
National Herbart Society was organized. This organization 
carried on investigation of the Herbartian system and prop- 
aganda for the purpose of spreading the doctrine. But 
under the influence of constructive criticism from practical 
school-men and from psychological laboratories the system 
soon lost its dominating influence. Herbart fell back from 
his rather overwhelming importance in American educa- 
tional procedure, and the purposes of the organization were 



THE WORK OF HERBART 325 

so far altered by the shifting conditions in theory and in 
practice that the name of the society was changed, early in 
the twentieth century, from the National Herbart Society to 
the Society for the Scientific Study of Education. That is 
to say, consideration of the whole broad problem of educa- 
tion was to take the place of the study and propagation of 
the doctrines of a particular man. But it is no small testi- 
monial to the values in the work of Herbart that he could 
thus transmute his discipleship into the broader discipleship 
of the scientific problem itself. And it may be said, in 
closing this study, that Herbart did not contribute much 
to the solution of the problems of educational psychology. 
That would have been impossible so early in the discus- 
sion. He rather contributed to a clearer conception of the 
exact nature of the problem. That is to say, he did not leave 
an answer to the problem ; he left a more complete statement 
of the problem for future analysis. 

Herbart differs from Pestalozzi in one fundamental par- 
ticular. Pestalozzi was profoundly interested in the way in 
which we build up a world for our uses through the activi- 
ties of the senses. Herbart is primarily interested in the 
world that is revealed to us through our ideas. He finds in 
history a great world of social and moral values, just as 
Pestalozzi finds about us a great world of nature. Her- 
bart 's question is this: How shall the child be enabled to 
build for himself, for the uses of his life, this larger world 
of morality? Herbart sees that such a world, if it is to 
arise at all, must arise in and through the thinking of the 
individual. Hence he is primarily interested in the proc- 
esses of our thoughts, the activities of our ideas, and how 
that activity of the mind actually passes over into the 
substance of our world of action. He loses sight, in large 
measure, of the problem set by Pestalozzi; but he sets the 
whole problem in a larger scale. 



326 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Herbart's influence upon American educational discus- 
sion has been very marked. It is doubtful, however, just 
what value that influence has had. He certainly succeeded 
in compelling educators to think about what they were 
doing. He broke up old routines and traditions, and he 
insisted that education should be the subject of intelligent 
discussion. But while he attempts to deal with the process 
in psychological terms, his psychology is so inadequate, so 
mechanical, that he does not get far. Instead, he turns 
aside to deal with materials, to organize materials in the 
proper sequence for presentation to the mind. Professor 
Dewey says of Herbart's method: "The theory represents 
the schoolmaster come to his own. . . . The conception that 
the mind consists of what has been taught . . . reflects the 
pedagogue 's view of life. The philosophy is eloquent about 
the duty of the teacher in instructing the pupils ; it is almost 
silent regarding his privilege of learning. ' ' That is to say, 
once more we are back among the materials. The teacher 
is to inculcate; the pupil is to passively "take on" the ma- 
terials ; and Kant, with his Copernican revolution in think- 
ing which sets forth the doctrine that the mind is to be ac- 
tive in the construction of its own experience-world, is for- 
gotten. 

Hence Herbart, having done his work of emphasizing the 
problem, must pass on. And once more we turn hopefully 
to a new adventure into the mazes of the problem. 

FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN MOVEMENT 

Herbart had set the problem of educational analysis on 
the high levels of intellectual and ethical realization. This 
is, of course, the most important aspect of the whole ques- 
tion, and Herbart advanced a statement of it which for a 
time was thought to be the final solution of the problem. 



FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN 327 

But we can now see that his work was but one of the many- 
necessary steps in the great social discussion, — a very valu- 
able discussion, but one which brought with it certain er- 
roneous conclusions and which is to be regarded as in no 
sense really final. "We must turn back upon the road by 
which he came and pick up some of the threads which he 
ignored. We turn to Froebel, the third of this great group 
who followed the general lead of the new psychological 
movement. 

Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852).— Froebel's childhood was 
not a happy one. After a varied career as boy and youth, 
he finally found the chance to enter upon the study of edu- 
cation. He visited Pestalozzi at the age of twenty-three, 
and later as a teacher he lived close to the Pestalozzian 
school atYverdun. Later he entered the University of Got- 
tingen, determined to find out how to educate human beings 
in scientific fashion. Here he did not particularly study 
children, or even adults ; nor did he devote his time to phil- 
osophy and psychology. Rather, he assumed that the life of 
man had been lived in the world, the world of objects ; hence, 
he assumed that a study of the world of objects would bring 
him closer to a clue to the processes of development of hu- 
man experience than would a direct study of that expe- 
rience. Later he did study the works of Rousseau, Pesta- 
lozzi, and Fichte, thus bringing together the results of his 
own study of the world within which men have grown up, 
and the results of the study of these great thinkers on the 
problem of the experience that has been developed within 
this world. He thus brought together the two essential as- 
pects of the problem of educational psychology. At the age 
of thirty-four Froebel became the guardian of his brother's 
children, and he conceived the idea of making these chil- 
dren the nucleus of a school that should embody his growing 



328 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

conceptions of education. This resulted in the Universal 
German Educational Institute, to which came many leading 
educators of the time. 

In 1826 Froebel published his "Education of Man." In 
1840 he opened the first kindergarten at Blankenburg. The 
idea spread, and in a few years kindergartens had become 
common in Germany. This institution was developed, it 
will be noted, in Froebel's mature years. He thought of it 
as an institution which should undertake to develop the 
child as an organism, knowing the nature of the organism 
that was to be developed and making an environment that 
should stimulate the sort of organic development that 
seemed desirable. This is the most admirable statement yet 
developed of the whole process of education. But it was 
far too liberal. It was the fate of Froebel's work that it 
should develop to this height in the days of the great liberal 
movement which culminated in the revolution of 1848 ; and 
it was also fated that it should be almost the first to feel 
the heavy hand of reaction which followed hard upon those 
constructive years. Raumer, reactionary minister of educa- 
tion, felt the dangers of such an organic education. In 
1851 he ordered all kindergartens closed throughout the 
whole kingdom of Prussia. Froebel did not long survive 
this blow at his cherished projects. He died in 1852. 

Comparison of Froebel with His Predecessors. — Pesta- 
lozzi worked out in some degree in the field of nature the 
general psychological proposals of Kant, while Herbart per- 
formed a somewhat similar service in the field of history. 
Each saw fairly clearly the meanings of Kant's revolution- 
ary doctrines as to the aim of education, but each failed 
rather conclusively in the matter of stating these new aims 
in the form of new and logically organized method; and, of 
course, if this psychological movement was to stand for any- 
thing, it must be for method, rather than for either materials 



FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN 329 

or aims. Froebel understood, at least in some measure, the 
failure of psychology to comprehend this problem of method. 
In his own work he undertook to remedy the defect. All 
his work is essentially in the field of method. He is not yet 
master in this field, as is shown by the fact that he devotes 
too much of his energy to the working out of mere devices; 
but he goes far beyond any other man of his time in the 
working out of the problem. However, he never succeeded 
in working out the significance of his method for the years 
beyond the kindergarten age; but, for that matter, those 
years have not, even yet, been successfully analyzed. 

Froebel's Method. — Froebel accepts the psychological 
point of view almost completely. The fundamental clue to the 
process of education he finds in his doctrine of the self- 
activity of the child. Pestalozzi had touched upon this, but 
Herbart, by his emphasis upon the primary nature of ideas, 
had been compelled to largely ignore it and to atone for its 
loss by introducing the doctrine of apperception. But Froe- 
bel holds conclusively to the rather advanced, even evolu- 
tionary, doctrine that children are, in their own right, nat- 
urally and natively active. It is not the teacher's business 
to get them to act. It is the business of the school to 
accept this principle of activity and make the most of it. 
It is the teacher's work to surround the active child with 
a rich world of possible experiences, so that in all their 
activity the children will be choosing constructive acts and 
building up a world of experience that shall be socially 
and ethically desirable, — a world that is in accordance with 
the principles of the good life. It is the business of teach- 
ers of whatever sort to live with their children, and not 
merely to teach them. 

But living with children means much more than mere 
personal presence; it is much more than mere intellectual 
performance. It particularly involves the development of 



330 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

a world of action for the children within which they will 
find the stimulations and the opportunities for a normal 
sort of life. They are self-active, as we have seen. 
Through a sort of philosophical mysticism Froebel finds 
God, expressed in universal law and underlying unity, in all 
things. He thinks of children as possessed of an original, 
unmarred nature, which should be given proper opportu- 
nity to develop. The teacher is to make possible the devel- 
opment of this inner nature. 

It is this expression of the inner life that marks out Froe- 
bel's doctrine as of peculiar importance. He says, "Never 
forget that the essential business of the school is not so 
much to teach and to communicate a large and varied as- 
sortment of things as it is to bring out into expression the 
ever-living unity that is in all things." Education should 
not command; it should nurture and cultivate. All out- 
ward action is to be the expression of the inner life. In a 
sense it is to be more, indeed. It is to be the expression of 
that great universal spirit that underlies all existence, which 
is the divine unity of existence. Stripped of its peculiar 
philosophical and religious phraseology, this doctrine is not 
far removed from much of the later evolutionary doctrine. 

Froebel's Psychology. — Froebel's psychology shows some 
wonderful insight and some strange lapses. It is too ex- 
tensive a subject to be developed here; but it may be said, 
on the side of his larger insight, that he recognized the 
manner in which the world of objects develops in the child's 
mind. Objects do not stand forth fully-made in the per- 
ceptions of the child ; they come into his experience in the 
actual development of that experience and through the 
slow growth of the powers of sensation, perception, and 
finally of thought. But he rather curiously supposes that 
all development is by a conflict between opposite powers, 
capacities, and sensibilities. So he sets sensations over 



FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN 331 

against each other in rather mechanical fashion. His psy- 
chology was inevitably warped by his religious interests 
and his pedagogical aims. 

Again, we must note that his general doctrine of educa- 
tion, which grew out of his religious and philosophical in- 
terests, implies a psychology of unfolding — that is to say, 
all that is to be in the long experience of the individual is 
infolded within the child at birth; and all that a proper 
education can rightly do is to endeavor to unfold this pre- 
viously infolded life. There is doubtless a great truth 
here — that the whole career of the child is closely bound up 
in the problems of his heredity. But there is also a great 
fallacy — that education involves no new factors, produces 
no reconstructions. Perhaps Froebel did not intend this in 
any narrow sense. In many respects he sets forth doc- 
trines which are close to the evolutionary doctrines so soon 
to be developed, but the full significance of the evolutionary 
movement — the work of Darwin — was not presented in 
Froebel 's lifetime. Hence he could scarcely conceive of an 
evolving environment, that is to say, an environment ex- 
pressing continuous change, whose educational significance 
would therefore be continuously changing. For Froebel, 
like all other pioneers, was fighting his way through un- 
known regions, exploring the hidden reaches of human na- 
ture. He did not always find reliable results. He some- 
times mistook hopes for realities, and he saw some great 
highways of educational commerce, where now we can see 
little but blind alleys. For example, he over-emphasized 
what he calls "gifts," a doctrine which has proved itself 
to be merely the older conception of a formal discipline 
illustrated by means of objects. 

But the general doctrine of the self-activity of the child 
underlies every constructive educational theory and every 
effective educational practice of the present; and the kin- 



332 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

dergarten, at its best, is a complete demonstration of this 
fact. That much, at least, has been gained by Froebel's 
work, and it will never pass away. To be sure, some of 
his followers have mistaken the husk of the doctrine for 
the kernel, and they have attempted to make the kinder- 
garten a place of definitely formal discipline through the 
use of chosen materials. Froebel's gifts have not infre- 
quently been erected into ultimate educational materials. 
His doctrines have become almost sacred in the thought of 
some, so that a certain type of kindergartner still takes the 
literal words of Froebel with something of the sacred finality 
of the medieval religious devotee. But a prophet cannot 
be held responsible for the follies of all his followers. 

The whole story of the work of Froebel should be taken 
up in his own writings, mainly in the "Education of 
Man," in which he deals with the fundamental moral and 
religious problems of education and expresses his conclu- 
sions in the doctrine of activity and in the working out of 
a curriculum which should secure "the union of the school 
and life, of domestic and scholastic life," Also in his 
"Pedagogics of the Kindergarten," in which he develops 
his theory of symbolism, a theory which has been such a 
stumbling-block to the literalists among his followers. To 
a man of great mystical nature, a poet, such words as the 
following are helpful and harmless: "The cube is to the 
child the representative of each continually developing 
manifold body. The child has an intimation in it of the 
unity which lies at the foundation of all manifoldness and 
from which the latter proceeds." But to a later literalistic 
follower such words can bring nothing but confusion, the 
straining to get something out of a cube which is not there, 
to impress children with meanings that do not exist. As 
Professor Dewey says, "We often teach insincerity, and 
instill sentimentalism, and foster sensationalism when we 



FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN 333 

think we are teaching truths by means of symbols." Or, 
as Professor Thorndike suggests in his "Notes on Child 
Study," "If we (adults) live in houses because they sym- 
bolize protection, if we like to see Sherlock Holmes on the 
stage because he symbolizes craft to us . . . if we eat 
apples because they symbolize to us the fall of man, . . . 
then perhaps the children play with the ball because it 
sj^mbolizes to them 'infinite development and absolute limi- 
tation.' " 

Of course it is not fair to blame all perversions of mean- 
ing upon an author. And it is not so certain as some of the 
modern psychologists seem to think that children get no 
symbolic meanings out of objects; undoubtedly the vague, 
far roots of later ideal meanings are hidden in the soil of 
the child's experiences. Pestalozzi hoped to "mechanize 
instruction"; but that fails because it is too completely 
materialistic. Froebel hopes to "spiritualize instruction"; 
but that fails because it does not give us any clue whatever 
to the methods of control. But just as we still work for 
a more complete understanding of the mechanics of in- 
struction, so we still work for a more essential grasp upon 
the meanings of education. Hence we can be grateful for 
the contributions that Froebel has made, while at the same 
time denying the validity of many of his proposals and still 
more the fantastic misinterpretations which his literal fol- 
lowers have made of his legitimate doctrines. The general 
spirit of his work was wholly constructive, and he prob- 
ably approaches nearest to a full expression of the signifi- 
cance of education and the modes of its development of any 
of the nineteenth century workers. But his work is con- 
fined to the period of infancy, within which the task of 
organization is comparatively simple. The extension of the 
same principles to the later years, — that is, the working out 
of the methods by which this same principle of self -activity 



334 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

can be conserved and depended upon all through the years 
of youth and on into the adult years, — is one of the larger 
aspects of the whole educational problem of the present. 
Not in his mysticism, nor even in his nobler idealism, are 
we to look for the real significance of Frbebel's work. It 
is in his emphasis upon the self-activity of the child — the 
child not merely as an ohject to be educated, but as the 
subject of his own education. 

After Froebel. — With Froebel we come to the end of the 
line of constructive educational thinkers in the psychologi- 
cal succession until near the close of the nineteenth century, 
when the new movement in educational psychology begins. 
Pestalozzi of course had his followers in Europe and Amer- 
ica ; Herbart started a great wave of investigation and prop- 
aganda that became the dominant influence in America for 
twenty years, during the latter part of the nineteenth and 
the beginning of the twentieth century; Froebel and his 
kindergartens are with us more and more. But no one of 
these interpretations of educational processes is complete 
or final, and work that is done in the traditional succession 
of any one of these is not final. Each of these represents 
a very necessary element in the larger synthesis of the edu- 
cational movement, but each by itself is out of equilibrium. 
That fact, however, is one of the conditions of movement, 
of progress ; and the pioneer work of these three great lead- 
ers will stimulate further thinking for centuries. 

Perhaps these contributions were as complete as the age 
in which they were made could endure or understand. 
Even to-day the psychological point of view is still unac- 
ceptable to many types of teachers. Perhaps, too, the gen- 
eral background of life and thought made more conclusive 
work impossible. We must remember that the old concep- 
tions of the origin and nature of life still prevailed, that 
evolutionism had not yet arisen. Perhaps the world must 



FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGARTEN 335 

catch up in its thinking along many other lines before this 
psychological statement of education can either be complete 
in itself or be convincing to the world. When Kant at- 
tempted to stand on the heights of philosophy and psy- 
chology, in order that he might see all parts of human ex- 
perience from the standpoint of the whole, he still stood 
in the midst of preevolutionary conceptions of human na- 
ture and experience. But in the middle of the nineteenth 
century all this began to change. Darwin gave to the 
world his revolutionary theory of the origin and nature of 
life, including human life, and in the succeeding years, 
even until the present, the conviction has slowly grown 
that this general conception of evolution must be applied to 
every phase of our understanding of the Vv^orld. Man 
takes his place as in and of the universe. His physical 
life is continuous with the common story of life upon the 
earth; his institutions are a part of the whole story of 
restless history. Psychology therefore must become the 
study of the whole of life and mind, not merely of the ex- 
clusive mind of man. Here at last man sinks into his 
proper setting in the general movement of universal evolu- 
tion. He can be no longer studied apart, separate, and 
alone, for his being is one with the nature of the world. 
And if he rises above the world in intellectual or moral 
dignity, that will be an achievement, not a gift. 

The meaning of evolution for our study of education 
will accordingly concern us next, and to that we now turn. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

THE CULMINATION IN EVOLUTION 

Our whole study up to the present has shown us the long 
spectacle of a more or less continuous conflict between two 
definite tendencies in human nature. We have been calling 
these tendencies after the fashion of their continuous mani- 
festations. On the one hand we have had the folkways, 
with their social customs and traditions, and their indi- 
vidual expressions in habit and conformity; on the other 
hand we have seen the recurrent expressions of revolt, of 
innovation and invention, and the demand that room shall 
be provided for growth and change. Both these aspects 
of life are natural; both are persistent; and each has its 
characteristic implications for the full statement of human 
experience. We have seen how the former, the folkway 
type, attempted to state all aspects of human life and hope 
and destiny in terms of one, great, all-inclusive system of 
practice and theory in medievalism. We have seen how 
the other phase of experience had its representatives and 
its expressions all through the ages, even when such ex- 
pressions were distinctly not socially accepted. But until 
far down in the modern period no satisfactory theory of 
the attitude of revolt or of change had come to clear state- 
ment, despite the fact that many revolutions had transpired 
and many changes had taken place. Men were doing things 
under the pressure of events which no acceptable theory or 
philosophy had been able to justify. The attitude of in- 
novation, represented in the work of Socrates, Jesus, Mar- 
tin Luther, and Rousseau, while it expressed the hopes of 

336 



THE CULMINATION IN EVOLUTION 337 

mankind, as over against the tragic stagnation of the folk- 
way ideal, had no conclusive argument to offer in its own 
justification until the middle of the nineteenth century. 
Then, not suddenly, but none the less with a considerable 
emotional shock to the world, all these constructive and 
progressive movements and hopes of the past seemed to 
find their complete statement and justification in the theory 
of evolution. 

Antecedents of the Evolutionary Doctrine. — The ortho- 
dox doctrine underlying all old folkway social orders de- 
scribes the world in final terms. The world was created 
at a rather definite time by the work of a special Creator ; 
life was created, also, and put into the world ; and man was 
created in the same way and put into the world, being given 
command to master the world and learn it. At the same 
time and in the same manner all our social, industrial, po- 
litical, religious, and educational institutions were created 
and given to men. Human life was planned out from the 
first ; its habitat was established, its limitations determined 
upon, its destiny decided, and its institutions properly set 
forth. This attitude of mind is rather vague in the primi- 
tive folkways, but it develops detail in the course of his- 
tory and becomes fully elaborated and explicit in the high- 
est stage of medieval organization. 

But in the early decades of the nineteenth century this 
old theory began to fall to pieces, and by the middle of 
the century another doctrine had been quite fully elabo- 
rated. The older theory had been undermined by century- 
long explorations in many lines, following the lead of age- 
old human hopes and activities. Geology was beginning to 
show that the earth had had a long history and that it was 
still in the processes of creation. Paleontology was show- 
ing that living forms had had a gradual development from 
the more simple to the more complicated. Comparative 



338 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

anatomy was showing similarities and parallelisms of devel- 
opment among all forms of animal life. Anthropology was 
demonstrating the long struggle of human life upward from 
the near-brutish. 

Again, philosophy had been trying for centuries to find 
some inclusive statement of the nature of the world which 
would still leave room for change. Kantian psychology 
had opened the way to a theory of growth by setting up its 
theory of the creativeness of the inner life. Following 
Kant, Hegel in partieidar urges this doctrine of develop- 
ment, with the gradual emergence of new forms, new func- 
tions, and new meanings. For Hegel (at least until he 
comes to his Absolute), the significance of life is found 
not in what is, or in what has been done, but in what has 
been promised, and the permanence and security of life 
are found in the fact of change. That which becomes final, 
degenerates. The security of life can be assured only in 
so far as continuous change can be assured. The striking 
feature of this doctrine is this: that all the struggle of 
history is but the effort of the absolute to free itself from 
the bounds of the unconscious and to become fully con- 
scious. Despite the fact that Hegel rather assumed that in 
his own philosophy the absolute had finally achieved this 
aim, this doctrine of the evolution of the absolute helps to 
prepare the world for the more real doctrine of evolution. 
Herbert Spencer's work in various fields of scientific and 
philosophical speculation helped to prepare the way for the 
coming of the culminating work, the ''Theory of Evolu- 
tion," in the presentations of Charles Darwin and Alfred 
Russell Wallace. 

The Significance of the Doctrine. — The theory of evolu- 
tion stands for many things, not all of which are either true 
or equally important. Its simplest statement might be set 
forth in such words as these, "Everything has a history." 



THE CULMINATION IN EVOLUTION 339 

For our purposes in this study we may say that it sug- 
gests some such principles as the following : the inadequacy 
of certain old doctrines of the origin of the world; the in- 
terrelationship of all forms of life upon the earth; the 
more or less gradual development and complication of the 
organic structures of animal and human life, especially the 
coordinate development of neural and muscular systems 
as means of control in the struggles of living forms with 
their organic and inorganic environmental conditions; the 
continuity of life from the lowest to the highest forms ; and 
the final denial of the adequacy of the Aristotelian type of 
logic as a complete description of the forms of human 
thinking. 

The evolutionary doctrine throws a reflected light back 
over all the past and clears up many things that have ap- 
peared strange all along our way. History has been an 
evolution, — we can see and say that now, — though it has 
always been interpreted as a fixed system and a final order, 
The first interpretations of the world were, as we have seen, 
folkway interpretations, developed in the midst of rela- 
tively fixed conditions of the primitive group. These ear- 
liest interpretations always assume the special creation of 
the world. Everything that is in the world was likewise 
created. Man was created, put into the world, and told to 
learn it, conquer it, and control it. That was seemingly a 
process to be gone through with once ; after that the world 
of things should have become a world of knowledge, of 
fixed ways of living, of fixed social organization, of fixed 
interpretations of all things, and of finished processes of 
development. 

Of course these fixed systems would never remain fixed; 
and there have always been embarrassing difficulties in 
getting from one of these final stages to the next one. But 
such logical jumps have been made by all peoples in all 



340 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

stages of their development, so that it would almost seem 
as if there had developed during the course of the ages a 
sort of gentleman's agreement not to notice this fatal de- 
fect in the folkway logic. At any rate, the persistent 
tendency of the folkway attitude is to reduce the whole of 
life to habit, custom, and tradition. And this tendency 
includes within its scope all aspects of the social world, so 
that the social institutions are as much a part of the final 
nature of things as are the physical features of the earth. 
"Jehovah ended his work on the seventh day; and he rested 
on the seventh day from all his work." 

This creation theory assumes that the world was put to- 
gether from the outside; there seems to be nothing of life 
and growth within the process itself. Plants and animals 
were all made; man, himself, was "formed" and the breath 
of life was "breathed into him"; a fixed nature was set up 
for him, with "everything created after its kind." And it 
is the obvious implication of this theory that all man's life 
is laid -out for him as fixedly as any other aspect of the 
creation was determined. Some such story as this appears 
practically everywhere in the primitive group life. 

Criticism of this Conception of the Nature of the World. 
— We have already seen how throughout history there have 
been those who have not been satisfied with this folkway 
interpretation of the meaning of human life and experience. 
Their dissatisfactions have been of the nature of impulse, — 
a primitive breath of original life, an energy of the will, 
rather than a clear idea. But evidence has slowly accumu- 
lated through the centuries. Revolutions have been fought 
out in all the major interests of life. The inner life of the 
race has revolted against the mechanisms of folkway exist- 
ence of the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance is the result ; 
the religious aspirations of the race have fought for free- 
dom from the institutionalisms of the Middle Ages, and 



THE CULMINATION IN EVOLUTION 341 

the Reformation and Protestantism and religious liberalism 
are the result; the intellect demands its freedom from the 
"received opinions" of the scholastics, and science grad- 
ually rises out of the mass of common doctrine; the civic 
hope of the race breaks through all barriers of "divine 
right" and the like, and democracy becomes a progressive 
realization. All these are impulses, and they are fighting 
against dogmatisms, intellectualisms, and institutionalisms 
of all sorts. This is not fancy ; it is the history of the race. 
And after many centuries the impulses of growth, revolt, 
and intelligence culminate. History comes to a new climax ; 
a new theory of the nature of the world, of human life and 
human experience, is set forth, a theory that in dignity and 
significance is worthy to take its place alongside the older 
theory of the Middle Ages and to contend with that theory 
for the allegiance of the world. History thus becomes con- 
scious of its own movements and its own inner workings in 
a new and deeper sense; it justifies the restlessness of its 
past and becomes avowedly and intentionally evolutionary 
in its ideals and its modes. And from this time forward 
history may be studied in the hope that the race will learn, 
at least in some measure, the processes of making history, 
so that the future will be somewhat under the control of 
human intention. 

The Reinterpretation of the World According to Evo- 
lution. — Practically the whole structure of civilization had 
been built up under the dominance of the belief in the story 
of creation, including the creation of all the institutions of 
human life, and even human nature itself. This mechani- 
cal origin of the world justified the terrible inequalities 
and injustices of life and gave the sanction of religion to 
the continuance of these conditions. All the established 
privileges of the established orders of earth were bolstered 
up in the sacredness of the creation story. All the hopes 



342 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

of the nobler social order of the future are involved in 
establishing that the creation story is no more sacred than 
the evolution story, and in the working out of the social 
method by which this evolutionary attitude can be made 
effective in all social relationships. The whole issue of 
civilization may be said to be joined at this point. Eco- 
nomic, social, political, ethical, religious, and educational 
values are concerned. It is the struggle between a me- 
chanical order, implied in the theory of creation, and a 
living and personal order, implied in the theory of evolu- 
tion. The creation theory presupposes a machine-world 
that, once set up, runs itself. All the institutionalisms of 
the past, from the folkways of the primitive world to the 
reactionisms of our present politico-industrial order, rely 
for their security upon this machine-world with its ma- 
chine-logic. "Whatever is, is right." All the possi- 
bilities of realizing the hopes of a nobler living, socially 
and educationally, — such hopes as were implicit in the 
teachings of Socrates and Jesus, — must rely upon the de- 
velopment of this other theory, with its insistence that in- 
stitutions shall be fluid enough to change as the conditions 
of living change ; that man is superior to institutions ; that 
institutions must serve human need ; that institutions must 
submit to the judgment of the present; and that nothing 
has a right to exist save that which really serves human need 
in some genuine way. 

Significance of this Theory for Education. — The full 
meanings of this revolution are not yet clear. Perhaps it 
is one of the implications of the doctrine that they will not 
ever all become clear. But we know enough about it to 
know that it means some very profound things for educa- 
tional theory and practice. In the first place, education 
will be by evolution, rather than by external creation, if 



THE CULMINATION IN EVOLUTION 343 

the most obvious aspect of the theory is acknowledged. But 
such a statement may mean very little. Let us see. 

There is now an evolutionary psychology which has its 
full significance for education. According to this psychol- 
ogy the mind of man is an instrument in the general process 
of living, not a basket to be filled with intellectual contents 
or wits to be sharpened for formal intellectual conflicts. 
Education comes, therefore, in the general processes of 
living, rather than in some abstract and usually unreal 
process of learning. All the institutions are elements in 
the process by which man has gained, and will continue 
to regain, control over the conditions in which he lives. 
All institutions are, therefore, subject to the recon- 
structive modes of experience. This will include the 
school. There was a time when schools, in the academic 
sense, did not exist. Education went on without their aid. 
They finally came in response to a definite need and for the 
accomplishment of definite purposes. Those needs and pur- 
poses are themselves the functions of changing conditions. 
The schools and education must be subject to the same 
changes. That education which was developed to meet a 
certain social function in a certain past age may well fail 
to serve the purposes of education in this age under 
changed conditions. But schools, like all institutions, are 
very conservative and loath to give up. They tend to main- 
tain their existence long after that existence is construct- 
ively useful, because dealing with old informations, as they 
do so largely, they do not always recognize when their 
existence has ceased to be vital As a result, they not infre- 
quently remain as a sort of second environment (to speak 
in evolutionary terms) over against the real environment of 
the child's active life. They may thus greatly complicate 
the educational problem, without greatly aiding in its solu- 



344 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

tion. The schools may even accept the general theory of 
evolution and teach it as a sort of timeless doctrine, while 
at the same time retaining obstructive survivals of old 
methods of social functioning which, under the changed 
conditions of to-day, offer no convincing reason for their 
existence in their present form. Intelligence is not a fixed 
and final thing, created, uncovered, or invented once for 
all. It is as fluid as the conditions of existence. There 
is no end to the possibilities of its developments. But there 
is an ever-present blind alley into which intelligence is for- 
ever running and forever losing itself. This blind alley is 
hahit. Blind alleys are extremely useful institutions for 
some purposes, but not for thoroughfares. The only escape 
from a blind alley is by way of the original entrance, or 
else by laying waste the fences of the neighborhood. 

The theory of education has been wonderfully broadened 
in its scope by the development of the theory of evolution. 
All history now pays tribute to the education of the race, 
and all our social institutions and activities are now seen to 
be intimately related to the outcome of any educational 
effort. The theory of evolution has dramatized the mental 
life of man and made psychology the most intensely human 
of all studies — ^when it is studied humanly. The structure 
of civilization has been put upon broader and more secure 
bases — universal bases, we may say. The life of man has 
been integrated with the very nature of the world. He 
was not created and put into the world ; he has grown up 
with the world, and the marks of its storms and stresses 
are in his features. He has whatever of permanence or 
reality the world itself possesses. All the rich and varied 
wealth of the world's physical and moral resources are 
available for his use as fast as he can uncover them and 
learn how to use them. They are his to use ; they are not 
alien to his nature. They are of the essence of his nature, 



THE CULMINATION IN EVOLUTION 345 

and he is of theirs, since all are products of the same funda- 
mental creative processes. 

This intimacy between man and the world, out of which 
he is to make his real life, is of the utmost significance for 
education. No longer must the old doctrine of the antag- 
onism between man's highest interests and the world stand 
in the way of the realization of human good ; no longer shall 
the doctrine that the world belongs to the evil one paralyze 
human effort toward the good. The doctrine of evolution 
implies that, little by little, humanity will learn how to con- 
trol the conditions of existence so that the really desirable 
elements of human good shall be realized. Evolutionary 
science has this aim: ''The task of science is found in 
working out the conditions which will make a good life pos- 
sible." Central in this task will be that of psychology, and 
especially educational psychology. "We cannot see as yet all 
that this will mean for education. But we know that it 
will mean much, too, for democracy, for the pruning away 
of old social, moral, and religious excesses, and for the en- 
larging organization of society for intelligent purposes, in 
place of old folkway goals and the goals of blind impulse. 

But such a broad and generous view of life will come 
to the world slowly. It will be fought by many influences, 
both open and insidious. Religion will fight it because it 
will seem to be altogether anti-religious ; morality will fight 
it, for it seems to compel men to ' ' reel back into the brute ' ' ; 
poetry will be enlisted against it. 

I think we are not wholly brain . . . 
Not merely cunning casts in clay . . . 
Let Science prove we are, and then, 
What matters Science unto men? 

But little by little the meaning of the conception will dawn, 
and it will be seen that — 



346 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Life is not as idle ore, 
But iron dug from central gloom, 
And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipped in baths of hissing tears. 
And battered with the shocks of doom, 
To shape and use. 

Strange as it may seem, perhaps the most vigorous ob- 
jections to the new doctrines will come from scientists of 
the older type who are unable to make their adjustments 
to the new mood and attitude. The accomplishments of 
science in the past are all too apt to become obstacles to the 
further development of science. At any rate, as we go on 
with our story we shall see that not infrequently old science 
stands in the way of new science. But our studies in the 
logic of history, as set forth here, should save us from 
surprise. Science, itself, is no magic matter; as developed 
materials it is just as likely to become complacent of its ac- 
complishments as any other body of materials ever became 
in any folkway age. Indeed, just because the methods of 
science seem so exact and final, the materials secured are not 
unlikely to bear a more definite mark of finality. The only 
assurance of the permanence of the scientific attitude is the 
recognition that science is not materials at all, but the spirit 
of inquiry at work in the service of man 's far-reaching hopes 
of a better world and a nobler life. But we shall see more 
of this attitude of science in the following section. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

THE EFFORTS OP SCIENCE TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF 
EDUCATION 

The theory of evolution came to science from the field of 
the biological sciences. It was first a suggested explana- 
tion of the origin of species and their interrelationships; 
and afterwards it was a theory of the origin of living forms, 
including the descent of man from that hypothetical origin. 
Now the work of the scientists in their laboratories, or in 
their long explorations about the world, had been rather 
far removed from the work of the philosophers and psychol- 
ogists in their more quiet studies. Darwin, however, saw 
rather clearly that this new theory was certain to affect in 
profound ways the old attitudes of both the philosophers 
and the psychologists. Of course practically all the philo- 
sophical interests that were in any way under the dom- 
inance of religious motives opposed the new theory. Not 
alone from the religionists, however, did this opposition 
come; the traditional scientists stood firm against the new 
doctrines. It was a crucial time in the history of science, 
as well as in the history of humanity. It involved new 
leaderships in science, and old leaders always protest against 
the new in any field. It involved the making over of all the 
ranges of human knowledge, and that always seems like an 
impossible task. Besides, it seemed as if humanity were 
asked to cross a great fixed gulf which would cut off all 
communication with the past and with all those values in 
defense of which both religion and the older science had 
been engaged. 

347 



348 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

The New Psychology. — Nowhere did this great gulf seem 
more complete or more fateful than in the field of psychol- 
ogy. The doctrines of the older psychology, reaching from 
Aristotle to Kant, had gathered around Psyche, the soul. 
This Psyche was somewhat of a stranger on the earth, un- 
dergoing experiences, learning, and discipline. On the 
educational side it was implicitly held that learning is a 
process of taking on materials, and hence the continued 
emphasis upon some form of materialism ; also in this proc- 
ess memory plays a most important part, since it is the 
storehouse of these materials. Toward the latter part of 
this period, not many decades before the theory of evolu- 
tion arrived, the doctrines of intellectualism became par- 
ticularly insistent. Hamilton, the Scotch philosopher, had 
declared, "Man is not an organism; he is an intelligence 
served by organs." It is true that, over against this intel- 
lectualism of the enlightenment, the newer thought, initiated 
by Rousseau, had suggested that mind develops by processes 
analogous to growth, — that is, by inner processes, rather 
than by those external processes of taking on materials. 
The psychology that was implicit in the new doctrines of 
evolution was to be much more closely related to this doc- 
trine of growth than to the older intellectualism. And 
Darwin, both in his "Descent of Man" and in his "Expres- 
sion of Emotions in Animals and Man, ' ' shows that he feels 
this closer relationship to the later type of thought. Spen- 
cer, also, feels something of the same kinship. But on the 
whole, the task of reinterpreting the standpoint of psychol- 
ogy and the working over of the materials of the older 
analysis into the new is too big for one generation. 
Psychology is written in much the old strain for decades 
after the publication of Darwin 's work, and it is not, indeed, 
until the publication of the larger work of James, in the last 
decade of the nineteenth century, that the real bearing of 



SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 349 

the evolutionary theory upon the organization of psychology 
becomes evident. What of the meantime? Well, Spencer 
states the case with characteristic fullness and naivete. He 
says in his "Education," "Though it is not possible for a 
scheme of culture to be perfected either in matter or form 
until a rational psychology has been established, it is possi- 
ble with the aid of certain guiding principles to make em- 
pirical approximations toward a perfect scheme," That 
is to say, in the absence of a rational psychology he will 
fall back upon the maxims of common practice, which are 
for him partly Pestalozzian, partly of the folkways. 

Now, as Spencer points out elsewhere in the same discus- 
sion, a satisfactory organization of the materials of educa- 
tion into the form of a curriculum will remain impossible 
until we do get some actual knowledge of psychology, until 
"we ascertain with some completeness how the faculties un- 
fold." That does not now exist; hence- his choice of ma- 
terials for the curriculum must be made. without such help, 
and, as is certain to be the case, he really falls back upon 
traditional conceptions much more completely than he is 
aware. 

The Rise of the Sciences. — There is no more wonderful 
story in human history than that which tells the tale of the 
rise of science. We have already seen something of this, 
but the whole story is far too long to be further touched 
upon here. But we must note a few elements in that other 
aspect of the same story — ^liow the sciences made their way 
into the schools. At the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the old traditional materials still remained in control 
of the schools, despite the many reform movements that had 
taken place, with the exception of a few scattering experi- 
ments which were generally regarded with some suspicion. 
But during the course of the nineteenth century a great 
change was forced upon the schools. New subjects in the 



350 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

sciences were rapidly developing, and these were demanding 
and securing admittance. New materials were rolling in 
upon the world from the simple laboratories of obscure 
workers in the fields of physics, chemistry, geology, botany, 
and zoology; from the more striking work of men like 
Franklin and Faraday in electricity. Watt and Stephenson 
in the control of steam, Hugh Miller in the observation of 
the structure of the earth, Linngeus, Cuvier, Buffon, La- 
marck and Darwin in plant and animal life, and from many 
other sources, — a brilliant story of remarkable achieve- 
ments. 

But these materials were not in the schools. The older 
materials of language and grammar looked with scorn upon 
these new, chaotic, unorganized masses of information. A 
real campaign would be needed to break through those old 
bulwarks of tradition and carry these new materials into 
the schools, and thus into the life of the people. To be sure, 
these scientific materials had been used in some measure in 
common life and practical ways, but this did not carry with 
it recognition of their value for educational purposes. The 
full meaning of science for the life of the world would not 
be realized until all the common life was brought into benef- 
icent contact with its promised values ; and this could only 
be accomplished by making these materials an integral and 
fully accepted part of the curriculum of the schools. The 
brunt of this battle for the recognition of the sciences was 
borne by two Englishmen, Spencer and Huxley. We must 
glance briefly at the work of each. 

The Work of Spencer.— Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) 
was the first famous advocate of the sciences in their modern 
form as educational materials. His essay "What Knowl- 
edge Is of Most Worth?" may be said to have ushered in 
the period of agitation for a place for the sciences in the 
schools. In this discussion Spencer vigorously attacks the 



SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 351 

traditional curriculum, almost bitterly condemns the con- 
ventional academic subjects, and urges upon all educational 
agencies the claims of the sciences to be that knowledge of 
most worth. He insists that the sciences are valuable for 
the practical guidance of life and for the discipline of the 
mind. Spencer was acquainted at second hand with the 
work of Pestalozzi, and he follows the lead of that reformer 
in some measure. He advocates a rational system of physi- 
cal education and a natural system of moral education, in 
which the punishment should fit the crime; and he would 
displace the old practices of arbitrary punishments in the 
school-room by substituting the Pestalozzian doctrines of 
interest and activity. 

Spencer classifies educations, according to their worth for 
life, into five main groups, as follows: "That education 
which prepares for direct self-preservation ; that which pre- 
pares for indirect self-preservation ; that which prepares for 
parenthood ; that which prepares for citizenship ; and that 
which prepares for the miscellaneous refinements of life." 
In the defense of these materials Spencer argues with fun- 
damental and convincing conviction. His arguments are, 
for the most part, unanswerable. But there were two as- 
pects of the situation that he did not fully perceive. First, 
arguments do not make much headway against the estab- 
lished routines of social life or conventional institutional- 
isms. The traditional subjects were in, and possession is 
more than nine points in an argument. The traditional 
school-men seemed rather to enjoy the eloquence of the ad- 
vocates of science; but they did not propose to give up 
any of their ancient privileges. But the second of these 
elements was perhaps more decisive. Spencer was himself, 
in very large measure, a traditionalist, except that he 
wanted a different, and doubtless more valuable sort of 
material to become the central factor of the tradition. This 



352 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

is seen in the fact that he was willing, as we have already 
noted, to accept "guiding principles," upon which an "em- 
pirical approximation toward a perfect scheme" of educa- 
tion could be built, in place of psychology. The latter 
was then non-existent. But this traditionalism of his point 
of view is more particularly seen in the almost vindictive 
hopefulness with which he closes his essay on "Which 
Knowledge Is of Most Worth ? ' ' After pointing out, truth- 
fully enough, that the sciences and the scientists of his 
time had been harshly and unfairly treated, he expresses 
the hope that a better day will come ; and he closes by say- 
ing: 

Paraphrasing an Eastern fable, we may say that in the family 
of knowledges, Science is the household drudge, who, in obscurity, 
hides unrecognized perfections. To her has been committed all 
the work; by her skill, intelligence, and devotion have all the 
conveniences and gratifications been obtained; and while cease- 
lessly occupied ministering to the rest, she has been kept in the 
background, that her haughty sisters might flaunt their fripperies 
in the eyes of the world. The parallel holds yet further. For 
we are fast coming to the denouement, when the positions will be 
changed; and while these haughty sisters sink into merited neg- 
lect, Science, proclaimed as highest alike in worth and beauty, 
will reign supreme. 

This doctrine was, of course, a little more than the tradi- 
tional school-men or the general public cared to accept. 

The Work of Huxley.— Thomas H. Huxley (1825-1895) 
was the second, and the greater, of the two advocates of the 
sciences as educational material. His arguments repeat all 
those of the scientists from Bacon to Spencer. He insists 
that education must have a practical purpose — it must en- 
able men to live. It must have a basis in reality, rather than 
in the verbalisms of the books, thus echoing the sense- 
realists of the seventeenth century. And he declares that 



SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 353 

if practical usefulness and reality are made the basis of 
choice of materials, the sciences will head the list of sub- 
jects in the curriculum. He asks "Is it too much to say 
that an education which should embrace these subjects [i. e. 
the sciences] would be a real, though an incomplete, edu- 
cation; while an education which omits them is really not 
an education at all, but a more or less useful course of in- 
tellectual gymnastics?" This question is, of course, di- 
rected against the prevailing classicism of the early nine- 
teenth century in England. Huxley's comparison of the 
verbalisms of this linguistic education with a course made 
out on possibly similar lines in the sciences is quite convinc- 
ing in a negative way. 

On the positive side Huxley writes with an eloquence that 
is masterful. His definition of a liberal education, set forth 
in his essay "A Liberal Education and Where to Find It," 
should be known by every teacher. As a statement of an 
educational ideal it has lasting significance. Of course, like 
many another educational ideal, his statement is difficult to 
translate into the method of educational practice. Hux- 
ley, indeed, shows little appreciation of the inclusive educa- 
tional problem. He would have every one acquainted with 
these wonderful results of the progress of the sciences, for 
there is no other knowledge that has such intimate and uni- 
versal relationship to all the various activities and concerns 
of living. But on the whole he would merely have them 
acquainted, — a sort of " Be ye acquainted ! ' ' proposal. His 
psychology is of the same general order with that of the 
sense-realists of the seventeenth century. He seems to as- 
sume that the whole problem in education is that of selecting 
the proper sort of educational material. His contributions 
to educational discussion are eloquent and valuable, but 
they do not help much in the analysis and solution of the 
problem. 



354 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

The Defense of Science. — The work of the great scien- 
tists in the furtherance of human knowledge can scarcely 
be overestimated. But it is not too much to say that in the 
main the work of modern science goes on in ignorance of 
the value of psychology. Many of the positions of the sci- 
entists are therefore impossible. Sometimes efforts have 
been made to ridicule psychology out of court, or out of use 
as a tool of educational procedure, just as certain naive 
healing cults have attempted to ridicule physiology out of 
existence, or out of use as a tool of hygiene. The tragedy 
lies in the fact that in so large a measure the various de- 
partments of science are isolated from each other in their 
own laboratories, technics, and routines. Modem science 
has stood for investigation, for scientific method, for the 
laboratory method, and the like, and also for the building 
up of great systems of knowledge ; and at times modern sci- 
ence has stood for the search for truth (what the Germans 
call Wissenschaft) in every phase of the word. But that 
has been only when rare individuals have been pleading the 
cause of science as the search for truth, and when they have 
been leading in its defense. Thus Huxley performed val- 
iant service in the defense of science in the days when the 
Darwinian theory was on trial. The cause of science as the 
endless search for truth was bravely defended by many 
able men in the nineteenth century, when the frontiers of 
science were in the biological fields, just as in earlier ages 
other strong men had fought for the same right to search 
in the fields of astronomy or physics. 

But the frontiers of science have now passed over into 
the fields of the social sciences — economics, politics, and edu- 
cation. And in rather deplorable measure the workers in 
the older and more established fields of the sciences have 
lost interest in the problem of science, having become over- 
busy with their work in the fairly free fields of investiga- 



SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 355 

tion. Hence the task of defending the frontiers of science 
has been largely left to the workers in the fields of the social 
sciences themselves, to whom, however, the right to call 
themselves scientists is rather grudgingly given. This de- 
fense of science is, of course, the greatest problem of the 
modern world. It is much more important, indeed, than 
the question as to whether certain scientific materials shall 
be included in the school curriculum. And this task of 
defending science is many-sided. It involves the fight, as 
of old, against the still unconquered forces of ignorance and 
prejudice and old falsehood. It must contend with the 
false conceptions engendered in many by the overzealous 
efforts on the part of young and enthusiastic men to destroy 
all human ideals in the process of destroying old falsehoods. 
And it must fight the complacencies and self-satisfactions 
of the established sciences, — those which have developed 
vested interests in the intellectual field, which have adapted 
their tasks to certain fixed boundaries, and which, through 
ignorance of the history of science and of psychology, have 
developed a scientific method which is fully settled and un- 
questionable. 

Scientific Method in Education. — ^When reference is 
made to scientific method, it is generally assumed that just 
one such method is possible. That is, of course, a very in- 
adequate conception, at least in the field of educational 
discussion. The term ''scientific method" is lisually em- 
ployed to denote the method used by an advanced investi- 
gator on the more or less remote frontiers of science, — a 
man who is actually making new and fresh contributions to 
human knowledge. 

But from the standpoint of educational theory there are 
at least three distinct scientific methods, each with its own 
objective, its own technic, and its own criteria of success, 
and each based on distinctive psychological conditions. 



356 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Failure to distinguish these three types is responsible for 
much of the futility of contemporary educational discussion, 
especially by representatives of the scientific point of view ; 
and this failure tends to turn all the advocates of the sci- 
ences into materialists of the seventeenth century type. Let 
us note these three types of method. 

First, there is, of course, the ordinary scientific method, 
which is supposed to be the method of the advance worker 
in his actual search for new truth, the original investigator 
who is dealing with materials which are new to himself and 
to the world. The aim, the technic, and the criteria of suc- 
cess are all distinctive, and they are determined by the ac- 
tual nature of the task. 

Second, there is the scientific method appropriate to the 
younger student, who is going over materials which are new 
and strange to himself, but which have been formulated in 
more or less logical completeness by the investigators who 
have gone before. Here, it must be obvious, a new sort of 
aim enters. There are new criteria of success and failure, 
and there must be a very different technic of accomplish- 
ment. The first type of method, sketched above, is obvi- 
ously out of place here ; but the lack of any other adequate 
sort induces the student to attempt to cover in a few hours 
what may have been the task of many lifetimes of earlier 
pioneers on the frontiers of science. Not infrequently mere 
learning, or mere memorizing, takes the place of real scien- 
tific method; and the result is, not unreasonably, that sci- 
ence ceases to be a worthy or engaging pursuit. 

The third type of scientific method is that needed by the 
teacher, i.e., one who is going over old materials for the 
second, tenth, or twentieth time. Here, again, all the aims 
are different, the technic is different, and the criteria of 
success and failure are different. The scientific world is 
a constructed world, a thought-out world, not either a 



SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 357 

memorized or an obvious world. But it has taken centuries 
to think out and construct this world of scientific achieve- 
ment. No child can take the time to rethink the world in 
any such fashion. On the other hand, memorizing books is 
the death of science. How shall the teacher make sure that 
the child thinks his way through the accomplishments of 
the thousand years of science in the few years of educational 
experience? That question sets the task of the third type 
of scientific method. 

But in large measure these three types of actual mental 
activity are naively confused in the discussion of scientific 
method in education, with the result that all the issues in 
education are confused. Usually this means that practical 
men fall back upon some sort of material as the solution of 
their troubles. Of course any successful scientist must be 
a successful practitioner of the first type of method, though, 
unless he is also something of a psychologist, he is likely 
to be but a poor expositor of that method in argument. 
Most students fail to develop the second type without actual 
aid of some sort, and that help is not always available. And 
while it is true that no amount of study of method can 
transform a dolt into a genius, it is also true that effective- 
ness of skill in working in the field of education can be 
enlarged by definite attention to these three forms of sci- 
entific method. Even the most brilliant natural-born 
teacher may be helped by some real study in this field. 

Freedom through Science. — One final item should be 
noted. It is the claim of the scientist that human freedom 
is to be accomplished by the rigorous application of the sci- 
ences to human living. There is large hope in this. But if 
this hope is to be realized, at least tivo aspects of the prob- 
lem must receive conscious, explicit recognition. The first 
is this: the term "science" must be freed in its own right 
from any narrow and petty application to any restricted 



358 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

subject-matter. Science must be recognized as a possible 
mode of approach in every aspect of human living, social as 
well as physical. And that means that the identification of 
scientific method with laboratory method is unwarranted. 
The essentials of scientific method seem to be, first, hypo- 
thetical thinking as opposed to old dogmatic thinking, and 
second, the testing of hypotheses, instead of accepting them 
on the basis of their reasonableness. And that testing may 
come in many ways. 

The second aspect of the problem of freedom through sci- 
ence is this : that science must not be identified with accu- 
mulated knowledge, i.e., with certain accepted materials. 
There is a scholasticism in modern science not less danger- 
ous than the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. It grows out 
of the same soil ; humanity clings to its old habits quite as 
tenaciously now as ever in the past. And the accomplish- 
ments of the scientist in his laboratory become quite as dear 
to his heart as the accomplishments of the scholastic in his 
closet. The test of the scientist is his love of the search, 
not his list of accomplished results. 

Scientific procedure has everything to give to the schools 
of a democracy; but when the sciences offer the schools 
merely the accomplished, material results of old research, 
it is as if the schools should be given not the bread of life 
they need, but the cold stones of conventional information 
that they cannot understand, assimilate, or appreciate. 
Science needs to make lasting compact with psychology, in 
order that the vital spirit of the search for truth may be- 
come an integral part of the program of the schools. 

The very existence of a democracy seems to depend on 
such a development. This, finally, may be seen from an- 
other point of view. Democracy needs discipline quite as 
much as does any other order of society ; but it must be the 
discipline of a free intelligence, not of a conventional social 



SCIENCE IN EDUCATION 359 

status. How shall discipline and free intelligence be devel- 
oped in the same individual ? Ever since the days of Locke 
at least, the world has rightly insisted that there can be 
no real education without such an actual discipline of the 
powers of the mind as shall make the mind a fit instrument 
for the uses of life. It was the boast of the older linguistic 
and mathematical studies that they alone were sufficiently 
definite in fonn to secure this disciplining of the mind, for 
discipline was regarded wholly as a matter of form. This 
older conception seemed to consider discipline as a sort of 
holding the unstable mind in a fixed form until its insta- 
bility had given place to a consistent and stable character. 
"We learn to think by reading the perfectly expressed 
thoughts of the world's great thinkers, until our minds are 
definitely molded on the lines of their perfection of form." 
From this point of view the sciences have little value as edu- 
cative materials, for the very concept of science indicates 
something that is forever mobile. 

But this conception of discipline seems too artificial, too 
external, too unreal. Psychologically, it is no longer ten- 
able. We do not learn to think in such fashion. Such ex- 
ternal discipline does not meet the needs of a scientific age, 
and it utterly fails to grasp the significance of discipline in 
a democracy. Science demands free intelligence; democ- 
racy demands free personality; and such a conception of 
discipline ignores the psychology of both free intelligence 
and free personality. On the other hand, the scientists have 
never faced the question of basing discipline on less formal 
and more vital grounds, grounds more in consonance with 
the spirit of science. Yet the real answer to the problem 
lies in the field of science. Discipline of the democratic sort 
does not come from externally imposed tasks or from imi- 
tation ; all discipline is, in the end, seZ/-discipline. All true 
discipline is of the nature of that training which comes to 



360 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the scientist who has put himself under control for the 
sake of some worthy goal which he himself has apprehended. 
From this point of view the educational process becomes 
wholly an inner process, not subjective in the invidious 
sense of that word, but "within experience," all external 
aims and all merely externally presented materials being 
eliminated. The educational process becomes one of con- 
tinuous growth of experience, continuous interaction of 
mind with fact, continuous reconstruction of experience, 
continuous development of control, and continuous disci- 
pline. 

But owing to the dominance of materials, this discipline 
into freedom does not usually take place. The sciences have 
not attracted students as they should have done, because a 
certain scientific materialism (in the educational sense) 
stands in the way of both discipline and freedom. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

THE DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN EDUCATION 

The third stream of influence flowing from the work of 
the naturalists of the eighteenth century was predominantly 
social. Not infrequently the educational ideal has become 
consciously social, for example, in the doctrines of Mon- 
taigne; and always, back of the most intellectual ideal, 
some more or less shadowy form of a social world can be 
seen, as, for example, in the ''Heavenly Fatherland," the 
1 ' ' Patria, ' ' of Thomas Aquinas. Scholasticism, even though 
*^ working at intellectual tasks, felt itself furthering the in- 
terests of a social sphere, even though in another world. 
Classical humanism, tied up in the grammar schools and 
newer colleges of the early modern period, was working for 
the development of a real humanity. And the rising in- 
terest in elementary education in the last two centuries has 
grown out of, and back into, the modern world of com- 
merce, industry, and democratic realization.^ Of course all 
education everywhere, from the primitive folkway life down 
to the present, has been determined by some sort of a social 
ideal, unless, perhaps, some element of lingering tradition 
remains to make the system no longer intelligible to the new 
age. It must be true that all education is preparation for 
some sort of living in some sort of a social world. 
1,/The Democratic Ideal in Education. — But never before 
/in history has the task of education been so seriously con- 
sidered as in the past century under the more complete 
realization of the meaning of all the revolutionary move- 

1 Dewey and Tufts, "Ethics," p. 165. 

361 



362 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ments of the modern world. Religious revolution, from the 
Reformation down to the present, shows clearly that human 
life is moving on toward an ideal of freedom from the arbi- 
trary dogmas and authorities of the past. Political revo- 
lution brings home to men continuously the fact that there 
is no halting-place short of the life of reason. Industrial 
changes are demonstrating that old distinctions between the 
educated and uneducated classes can no longer be main- 
tained along economic lines. And the intellectual revolu- 
tion is simply gathering up, organizing, generalizing, and 
applying these great realizations to the ever-widening 
spheres of living. Education must turn them all to the 
uses of living and the preparation for more intelligent liv- 
ing. The task of education becomes inclusive. The ideal 
of education under these conditions of freed emotion, intel- 
ligence, and action is really human in a sense never dreamed 
by the Humanists. Economically, men must be free to 
work, to enjoy, and to share the values and meanings of life 
in a human way. Very well ; let education take account of 
this aspect of the task. Politically, men must be free to 
deliberate, to know, to decide, to choose, and thus to help 
determine their own destinies and the destinies of one an- 
other in a human way. Very well; let education take ac- 
count of this fact. Religiously, men must be free to wor- 
ship or to refuse to worship, to "reverence their conscience 
as their king" in a human sort of way. Very well ; let edu- 
cation understand this fact. And mtelligence must become 
big enough to comprehend these freedoms which the soul 
of the race is determined upon. The ideal of education in 
a democracy must be inclusive enough to maintain an actual 
aim of freedom, while at the same time making use of all 
the materials of the past and all the achievements of the 
present to realize and criticize and make effective that aim 
of freedom. 



DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN EDUCATION 363 

The Machinery of the Democratic Ideal. — Older ideals 
of education found their machinery in the traditional in- 
stitutions of the community, especially the church. In 
large measure, schools have been handmaidens of the re- 
ligious hopes of the race. To be sure, the governmental in- 
stitutions have usually promoted educational enterprises of 
a more or less limited sort. But any sort of education less 
than a completely democratic type must find much of its 
support in special classes or groups. But with the coming 
of th3 free period in political life, and with the demand for 
the common education of the community, education has be- 
come more and more the necessity of all persons ; and there- 
fore it has become the task and responsibility of all persons, 
working through the state. The modern democratic pro- 
gram is a program of state promotion of public education. 
The state is the organized instrument for collective action, 
and education is the most thoroughgoing example of collec- 
tive action. The state is therefore its proper instrument. 
Pestalozzi saw this. Headway in handling^ the destinies of 
the poor and ignorant depends upon making that problem 
a public responsibility. Horace Mann saw it, and decided 
that a school-house must be built within the reach of every 
boy and girl, without regard to economic considerations. 
Increasingly the modern world has seen it, and laws have 
been passed making it compulsory for every child, within 
certain age-limits, to attend some sort of school. The task 
that proves too great for individual initiative or for private 
philanthropy becomes surprisingly simple when made a dis- 
tinctive part of the public will through governmental action. 
The perpetuity of the state, the stability of institutions, the 
conduct of affairs — all depend upon intelligence, or so it is 
assumed, and in this sense "the public school is the hope 
of the country." Life, itself, becomes the criterion of 
progress in educational matters. In a sense this is a return 



364 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

upon the implicit ideal of the primitive folkways. But of 
course it is much more sophisticated, much more elaborate 
and intelligent. Also not infrequently the results achieved 
are accepted by the public with quite the same complacency 
as was characteristic of the primitive folkways. Democ- 
racy has not yet learned how to build educational institu- 
tions with the patient insight and the sympathetic intelli- 
gence capable of interpreting to the growing child the mo- 
tives of freedom that have been the most earnest desire of 
the modern age, so that those motives become his own. The 
wish to be democratic is with us more or less ; the ideals of 
democracy become clearer from decade to decade; but the 
actual will-to-be-democratic is not yet present, and especially 
the actual method of democracy in education, that is, of 
democracy in the experience of children, is not yet clear. 
Accordingly, we have only partially realized our democratic 
professions. Present world-conflicts press home upon us the 
larger nature of the task. But certainly, if the world is to 
be "made safe for democracy," the work must begin in the 
schools. However, there is as yet little agreement as to just 
M'hat a completely democratic or social program in education 
would include. A "school-house within reach of every 
child" has not solved the problem; compulsory attendance 
has not been able to overcome the difficulty. What shall be 
the nature of our program? What shall be the aim? We 
must note the characteristics of a number of answers that 
have been proposed for meeting this question. 

Education as Universal Intelligence. — The social em- 
phasis upon education has become more pronounced in the 
century since, and following upon, the work of Pestalozzi 
and others who looked at education from his point of view. 
In a fashion education has become quite aware of its social 
significance. For example, an American statesman, Mr, 
Garfield, suggested, ' ' We must offset the dangers of univer- 



DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN EDUCATION 365 

sal suffrage by means of universal education. ' ' Out of tliis 
conception, which is based partly on hope and partly on 
fear, there has arisen the ideal that education should mean, 
primarily, universal dissemination of knowledge, since 
knowledge is both safeguard of past accomplishment and 
guarantor of future progress. This is further emphasized 
by the fact that there is a growing wealth of vital and useful 
knowledge in the world, though not all the world realizes this 
fact and hence we have stagnation or slight progress, where 
we should be having constant progress. Most people know 
far less than they are able to know, and just to that extent 
human progress is delayed or defeated. Education thus 
becomes a public function; it should be controlled by the 
state, in order that every individual may fully share in it 
and in order that the knowledge so disseminated may be 
public knowledge and not private, interested knowledge. 
In his ** Dynamic Sociology" Ward defines this educational 
ideal and describes the system necessary to its realization as 
"a system for extending to all members of society such of 
the extant knowledge of the world as may be deemed most 
important." 

It were well for the student to realize that Ward's con- 
ception contains some essentially Platonic elements. It 
urges the control of all information by the state, and the 
dissemination of such parts of it as may be deemed to be 
most important. These are almost the identical proposals 
of Plato. It should also be noted that this is wholly an 
informational conception of education, and as such it is 
not far removed from the doctrines of Montaigne. That is 
to say, it does not rise to the level of recognition of the 
psychological factors involved in educative processes, but 
simply assumes that information may be taken on by any 
one. It illustrates how lacking much sociological theoriz- 
ing has been in psychological insight. Up to within the last 



366 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

decade there has existed no social psychology able to give so- 
ciological theory its proper tool of psychological analysis. 
The effort to state social necessities or social theories in 
terms of traditional, non-social psychologies has proved ab- 
solutely futile. The greatest need of the present, from the 
standpoint of a sociological theory of education, is the de- 
velopment of a thoroughly effective social psychology. 
Until that appears, sociological theorizing is likely to prove 
pedantic and scholastic, especially as concerns educational 
processes. 

Education as the Development of a Social Mind. — 
Within the last two decades there has been some develop- 
ment of such a social psychology in a general and gross 
sort of way. One result of this development has been the 
working out of the theory that there exists what may prop- 
erly be called a social mind, which is something other than 
the sum of individual minds, which is prior, indeed, to the 
existence of individual minds. This assertion, of course, is 
challenged on every hand. But there seems good ground 
for such a theory. Professor Cooley has formulated the 
doctrine in this way: ''Every thought that we have is 
linked with the thought of our ancestors and associates, 
and through them with society at large. [This] is the only 
view consistent with the general standpoint of modern sci- 
ence, which admits nothing isolated in nature. ' ' ^ Such a 
statement brings us a hint from the folkway world, where 
what he describes was certainly true, and it helps us to see 
how deeply and unconsciously the great cultures and insti- 
tutionalisms of the past underlie all our living and think- 
ing. But this statement also brings us a curious denial of 
one of the original proposals of Rousseau. In his earlier 
writings, and, indeed, all the way through his work, Rous- 
seau harps upon the failure of society, and especially upon 

1 Cooley, "Social Organizations, pp. 3-4. 



DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN EDUCATION 367 

the evils of traditions and institutions. He would escape 
from all this past accumulation of evils and find freedom 
and the chance for a fresh start in a life developed apart 
from the world and from all contact with ancestors and 
conventional associates. He assumes that society began in 
some such atomistic way, i.e., by the coming together of 
hitherto independent individuals who agree to live together 
in a social group. 

Rousseau's lack of psychological insight appears plainly 
here. Psychology is now showing us that individual ex- 
perience is really deeply rooted in the accumulated experi- 
ence of the race. Individual habit grows up under the 
tutelage of social habit; the folkways are endlessly present 
and effective even to-day. "Education comes not from the 
books; it is borne on the currents of the folkways." The 
great social mind of all the past with all its traditions, 
attitudes, prejudices, hatreds, tolerances, and faiths, im- 
poses itself upon us. Rousseau tried to find a way of escape 
from this; he would run away from it all to the freedom 
of nature. But the fate of "Emile" shows how impossible 
such an escape is. The only possible escape from it is in 
facing it, tearing it to pieces, analyzing it, grappling with 
its evils, accepting and enriching its goods, and using it in 
the making of a world in which our chastened energies and 
purposes can dwell. Certainly there can be no more la- 
mentable failure than in running away, unless it be found in 
the credulous acceptance of all the content of this social 
mind, for that would be the full surrender to all the ele- 
ments of custom, the denial of intelligence, and a return to 
the primitive folkways. 

Education as Social Control. — Another of these socio- 
logical ideals of education defines the function of education 
as the "chief means of social control." This is a great ad- 
vance upon some old conceptions of social control — control 



368 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

by the authority of some arbitrary or supernatural power 
expressed through king, soldier, policeman, or priest. 
Knowledge is to take the place of all these, except, of course, 
in the case of certain abnormal types who must still be con- 
trolled arbitrarily. But here again there seems to be a 
falling short of complete recognition of full democracy. 
There will be authorized leaders whose business it will be to 
determine just what directions this control shall take. Hu- 
manity, even democratic humanity, is not ready to take 
authority unto itself and accept the responsibility of de- 
termining its own destiny by means of its own intelligence. 
This was the implicit proposal, it will be recalled, of Soc- 
rates to the Greek world. Such a proposal, impossible in 
the days of Socrates, might be possible now, if all intelligent 
men were willing to play the game in that way, for the 
high hopes of an intelligent democracy. Now and then we 
seem ready to commit ourselves to such a program. It is 
the ideal of science and of democracy; it is implicit in all 
the revolutions of the modern world; it is the only logical 
stopping-place for all those who are in sympathy with the 
revolt from medievalism. But we are not yet quite brave 
enough for it. Meanwhile we linger under a sort of hy- 
brid social control, supposedly democratic and intelligent, 
but largely determined by old folkway attitudes inherited 
from the Middle Ages or more remote times. 

Education as the Human Interpretation of the Evolu- 
tionary Process. — The evolutionary process is usually 
stated in terms of a struggle for existence, although such a 
statement is not by any means conclusive or inclusive. On 
the lower levels, however, struggle seems to be a more or 
less constant factor ; and in that struggle a certain type of 
fittest is selected for survival. Such an outcome seems, 
however, to be very distinctly wanting in ethical quality. 
Educational processes find their place in the evolutionary 



DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN EDUCATION 369 

movement by stating the process in slightly different fash- 
ion. The selection of individuals for survival is to be on 
other grounds than the fittest in the lower sense. Social 
selection, moral selection, intelligent selection — these are 
to take the place of natural selection. Rather, selection is 
to go farther still ; the task of education is to be that of fit- 
ting as many as possible for survival. This is to be accom- 
plished in two main ways. First, by means of the applica- 
tion of eugenic principles a better general level of the race is 
to be attained. Second, by means of a more natural educa- 
tion a larger realization of possible individual contribution 
to the sum total of human living is to be assured. Educa- 
tion is to be consciously utilized in this way for the elimina- 
tion of social evils and the prevention of social waste, by 
starting the young along lines of social development which 
do not lead to the traditional ills. This is scientifically pos- 
sible (involving evolutionary science) and democratically 
desirable (saving as many as possible for the life of free- 
dom in society). 

The Ultimate Problem of Democratic Education. — We 
have here set forth several worthy aims or interpretations of 
education which have developed under the growth of the 
modern social and democratic movement. "Universal in- 
telligence," "gradual development of a social mind," "in- 
strument of social control," "highest term in the evolution- 
ary process, ' ' — each of these is distinctly a valuable offering 
to the understanding of the educational problem in a democ- 
racy under modern scientific development. But the fact is 
that they do not work out democratically. Universal intel- 
ligence becomes a program of cramming and stuffing ma- 
terials; gradual development of a social mind becomes ac- 
commodation to some present sectarian partisanship, or an 
acceptance of such a conception of the status quo as to make 
all progress impossible ; the instrument of social control be- 



370 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

comes the right of special interests — economic, religious, po- 
litical, or some other — to criticize all programs of educa- 
tion and to decide what materials shall be taught and what 
withheld, what activities shall be allowed and what permit- 
ted; and that highest term in the evolutionary process be- 
comes identified with some local, racial, or national Kultur 
as an expression of the absolute, and evolution comes to an 
end before its term. 

The ultimate problem of education in a democracy is not 
found in securing the statement of ideals or materials. 
These we have in great abundance, yet we do not have a 
democratic education. That final problem lies in the gen- 
eral field of method, that is to say, in the field of under- 
standing of the processes of experience. Democracy is 
something far more than a vague ideal; certainly it is not 
an ideal that will realize itself. And certainly democracy 
is not a material at all; there are no materials that are es- 
sentially democratic and that under all circumstances can 
be depended upon to produce a democratic outcome. De- 
mocracy is an attitude of mind, a keen sense of a particular 
type of human relationships, a willingness to face realities 
in a peculiar way, a breaking down of certain types of old 
artificial barriers, and an opening of the whole world of hu- 
manity to new freedoms of personal participation in the 
goods of the world and to new resources of social contact. 
Education for this sort of living demands knowledge, of 
course ; but it demands more than knowledge. It demands 
a sense of direction; it demands a method. This method 
will be primarily psychological, of course; but it will be 
constructed out of a psychology that is thoroughly demo- 
cratic and social, as much so as is the aim that it seeks to 
realize. "We have these modern aims, and we have much 
modern material worthily able to nourish our democratic 
moods ; but we retain in our educational practice the same 



DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT IN EDUCATION 371 

old methods almost completely. Our school administra- 
tions, at least, our administrative attitudes, are still largely 
autocratic. Our class-room teaching is still largely tradi- 
tional. The curriculum is handed down to our teachers in 
a purely Platonic fashion, our teachers teach materials they 
do not understand, and our pupils take on materials out of 
this ''preexistent treasure-house" of books and libraries. 
We are molding our children to old forms of thinking, to 
old absurd obediences, to old customs and traditions, to the 
type of a world that exists nowhere any longer, except in 
pedantic text-books and in the mind of a thoroughly insti- 
tutionalized teacher. This is not democratic. There is no 
hope for democracy in such a program. Yet our political 
institutions are professedly democratic, and we say that we 
live in a democracy. "No amount of our ordinary type of 
education will develop personal self-control and the habit 
of responsibility. ' ' And democracy is just those two things 
— personal self-direction in an intelligent, responsible social 
way. 

Now our chief difficulty in the development of such an 
education arises from the fact that we do not see that it 
involves the development of the same essential attitudes and 
practices in the community life. We shall never get a 
democratic product from our schools as long as our com- 
munity life as a whole remains essentially traditional, if for 
no other reason than that the graduates of such an educa- 
tion would find themselves outside the community life be- 
cause their education would unfit them to live in society. 
But there is another reason why such an outcome is impos- 
sible: school education is not, even now, as effective as the 
education of the life outside of school. No, all the phases 
and institutions of our social living must be made demo- 
cratic, if our education is to become such — our economics, 
our industries, our civics and our ward politics, our ethics 



372 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

and our community moralities, and our conceptions and our 
practices. Education is not apart from life; it is just the 
adult generation giving its own world to the new genera- 
tion. And be sure the adult generation will not give a very- 
different world from that in which itself lives. The adult 
generation cannot keep its own private evils, traditions, 
greeds, autocracies, shams, follies, and insincerities, and ask 
the school, working right in the midst of these effective in- 
fluences, to produce a new generation committed to good, to 
science, to altruism, to' democracy, to honesty, to wisdom, 
and to sincerity. The democratic problem in education is 
not primarily a problem of training children; it is the 
problem of making a community within which children can- 
not help growing up to be democratic, intelligent, disci- 
plined to freedom, reverent of the goods of life, and eager to 
share in the tasks of the age. A school cannot produce this 
result ; nothing but a community can do so. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

SOME CONCRETE RESULTS FROM HISTORY 

The last chapter closed with the statement "A school can- 
not produce these (democratic) results; nothing but a com- 
munity can do so. ' ' Thus we see that we have come back to 
the folkways from which we set out. At least, we have come 
back to the community, where once the folkways reigned 
supreme and within which that thoroughly successful edu- 
cation of the primitive world was secured. We have made 
the round of the ages. We have seen the folkways dissolve 
in Athens and come to larger construction in the Europe 
of the Middle Ages; we have seen the great structure of 
habit and institution persist under the reconstructive move- 
ments of the ages. We now see that life must be lived in 
contact with, and against the background of, this great and 
persistent structure of tradition. To be cut off completely 
from that is to be, in deadly truth, a man without a coun- 
try. But the community of to-day is not the primitive 
community with which we began. There have been great 
gains. ''Socrates discovered free personality and moral 
freedom, and made the greatest of all epochs in the world's 
history." Primitive Christianity opened the way of es- 
cape for the individual from the larger suppressions of the 
imperialistic community, declaring (as interpreted in the 
Reformation) that the good man shall live by his own good- 
ness, not by the second-hand goodness furnished by institu- 
tions, though institutions do offer the opportunity for the 
organization, development, and discipline of his own good- 

373 



374 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ness. And the Teutonic barbarian brought in that "fresh 
blood and youthful mind" which against all the demands of 
mere institutional absolutism have stood firm for the realiza- 
tion of free intelligence, free personality, and a free world, 
thus bringing the ideals and developments of science and 
democracy to the modern world. 

Over against these positive gains the institutional or folk- 
way attitude has set up, age after age, new finalities of doc- 
trine and of practice. We have seen this on the largest 
scale in medievalism. That is its most conspicuous achieve- 
ment in world-organization. But never has there been an 
age that has not produced some special development of this 
desire for finality, some final material or some ultimate 
theory. The ages are strewn with the wrecks of old the- 
ories whose memories are still with us, indeed, whose devo- 
tees are still with us, as we shall see in a moment. For it 
has been the consistent tendency of all reforms to succeed 
too easily, that is, to accomplish some result and then to sub- 
side. But the reform has not been merged into the whole 
process of progress. Something of it remains — ^some creed, 
some touch of a strong personality, some scrap of old organi- 
zation — and this sets itself up as an independent aim or end 
in itself. Soon custom, tradition, and sanctity gather 
round this attitude and it becomes part of the permanent 
habit of the world. This tendency is human ; that is to say, 
it is found in all the various interests of our living — eco- 
nomic, political, moral, religious, and educational. History 
seems from one point of view but a long search for that 
final solution of all our problems, a magic element, like the 
"philosopher's stone" of the Middle Ages. How many 
times has this final solution been found ! How frequently 
has it been grappled to the soul of an age, established in its 
beliefs, and depended upon as the last word in all human 



CONCRETE RESULTS FROM HISTORY 375 

striving! How often has humanity been disillusioned of 
these finalities! How often has it returned, undismayed, 
to the next that offered! 

The net result appears in the fact that we are now the 
possessors of many of these solutions, each of which has 
largely turned out to be not a solution at all, but one more 
element in the problem that is to be solved. Its adherents 
prove to be not reformers, but obstructionists of a stubborn 
sort, unless the world consents to be saved after their own 
particular formula. Their logic turns back toward Aristo- 
tle, and their real task is not to solve problems at all, but to 
preserve their own dignity. 

In this way we have come down to the present. It is an 
age filled with the shoutings of clamorous partisanship, with 
many schemes pressing for recognition, and each scheme is 
quite fully convinced that its own solution is the only genu- 
ine one. There is, of course, no lack of humor in the situa- 
tion. One of the most vigorous of the partisan voices does 
not hesitate to declare, "The more I think about my own 
solution of this problem of education, the more convinced I 
am that it is the right one." "We are primarily concerned 
with the present, and with what it means for the future. 
Hence, before we take leave of our subject, we must under- 
take a brief survey of these clamorous groups illustrating 
the character of the age. Perhaps such a survey will give 
us some clue to the larger nature of the problem. Let it 
not be unnoted that we are here seeking not a solution to 
a problem, but a more inclusive understanding and state- 
ment of the problem; and a very complicated part of this 
problem is found in the certainties of these educational 
parties that their solutions are correct. We shall look at 
a few of the many that exist. 

The Classics Party in the Present. — As we have seen in 



376 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

the course of this study, historic movemeuts have produced 
lasting heritages of culture materials which have come 
down to us under the general estimate of classical. At 
times these have been ignored, sometimes because they 
were lost, sometimes because overfulsome eulogy had disil- 
lusioned the world of them. But over and over they have 
been gathered up and used to make life rich and full of 
the sense of the deep and poignant beauty of the world 
when it was young. Now somehow the race does not seem 
inclined to live on those high levels continuously; besides, 
occasionally there are other aspects of the world that seem 
to be worthy of genuine regard. The result seems to be 
that the classicists take this as a sort of personal affront, 
or as a deliberate effort to degrade the world from its lib- 
eral aspirations. 
One writer says: 

Liberal training, once a distinction and an advantage, has been 
cheapened until it is held in contempt, unless in some way com- 
bined with the immediately practical. As in Mark Twain's story 
there were no gentlemen, because everyone was a gentleman, or 
claimed to be one, so there is now no intellectual aristocracy, 
because everyone is an intellectual aristocrat. . . . Like the 
church, which was inundated by the spiritually unfit in the time 
of Constantine and lost its high quality, intellectual life under 
democracy has become debased through taking to itself the whole 
world of the intellectually unfit. . . . Unable to bring every 
mountain low, democracy sticks its head in the sand-flats of its 
own creation and refuses to concede the existence of high ground 
at all. . . . There is bound to be liberal education somewhere. 
. . . The liberal arts, once sitting serene in the high citadels of 
aristocratic privilege, have descended and offered themselves to 
the common dwellers in the plain; if they are flouted we may 
look to see them return to their blessed heights and adopt their 
old-time attitude of reserve. Liberal culture will again be aris- 



CONCRETE RESULTS FROM HISTORY 377 

tocratized; the knowledge that is distinction, that is power, that 
is happiness, will once more hang beyond the reach of the com- 
mon man, — and tliere we shall be again, with the same old prob- 
lem of inalienable right on our hands.^ 

The Scientific Party in the Present. — Passing by the 
arguments of such propagandists as Huxley and Spencer, 
referred to and quoted in a previous chapter, we find much 
vigorous reasoning as to why the public attention and 
support should be accorded to science and scientific educa- 
tion. Professor Karl Pearson's ''Grammar of Science" 
sets forth these arguments in effective summary thus : 

The scope of science is to ascertain truth in every possible 
branch of knowledge. There is no sphere of inquiry which lies 
outside the legitimate field of science. To draw a distinction be- 
tween the scientific and philosophical fields is obscurantism. . . . 
The scientific method is marked by the following features: (a) 
Careful and accurate classification of facts and observation of 
their correlation and sequence; (b) the discovery of scientific 
laws by aid of the creative imagination; (c) self-criticism and 
the final touch-stone of equal validity for all normally constituted 
minds. . . . The claims of science to our support depend on: 
(a) The eflScient mental training it provides the citizen; (b) the 
light it brings to bear on many social problems; (c) the increased 
comfort it adds to practical life; (d) the permanent gratification 
it yields to the esthetic judgment. 

Surely we might now be content to learn from the pages of 
history that only little by little, slowly, line upon line, man, by 
the aid of organized observation and careful reasoning can hope 
to reach knowledge of the truth, that science in the broadest 
sense of the word, is the sole gateway to a knowledge wliich can 
harmonize with our past as well as with our possible future 
experience. As Clifford puts it, "Scientific thought is not an 

1 Showerman, "The American Idea"; "School Review," Vol. XIX, 
pp. 159-60. 



378 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human prog- 
ress itself." ^ 

The Sociological Party in the Present. — Passing by the 
fact discussed in our general view of the democratic ideal 
of education that this doctrine may mean several very 
diverse things, we find that in general there is a more or 
less loosely bound group of partisans who insist upon the 
general doctrine of socializing education. Their attitude 
may be seen in the following quotation : 

The school can contribute to the intelligence of its rising citi- 
zenship by drawing directly upon that large fund of present-day 
social, political, and economic knowledge that has made the low- 
priced magazine the tremendous power it has become in our 
national life in the last fifteen years. . . . The school should be- 
gin to teach the nature of the cooperative functions of society. 
For example, the pupils should learn in a simple way the func- 
tions of the policeman, the fireman, and the street-cleaner. They 
should understand that the streets belong to the people, and that 
they are loaned in part to transit companies, and to telegraph, 
telephone, lighting, and water companies. They should be made 
to see the public nature of these corporations. . . . All study of 
civics, history, and other forms of social science should clarify 
the pupil's understanding of the social forces and problems of 
his immediate environment. For example, civics, instead of 
studying governmental organization beginning with the constitu- 
tion of the United States, should begin with community functions 
in District Number Ten, or the Nineteenth Ward. . . . The com- 
munity functions of the neighborhood, village, ward, and city are 
concrete, simple, immediate, and personal ... it is a simple step 
to the understanding of the great national questions that are 
claiming the serious thought of every patriot. The trusts, the 
bosses big and little, the control of legislation through caucus 
rule, and the influence upon the big leaders by the "interests," 
capital and labor, social legislation, lobbies legitimate and other- 

lOp. cit, p. 37. 



CONCRETE RESULTS FROM HISTORY 379 

wise, — all of these and hundreds of other questions are vital to 
the civilization we are building. Our young people must under- 
stand this, because under a despotism the government may be 
better than the sum total of the citizensliip, while under a democ- 
racy the government may be worse, but never can be better. 
This is the fundamental reason for our expensive school system.^ 

This sort of doctrine is especially prominent in educa- 
tional discussion to-day. It has several variants, of which 
we shall examine one or two briefly. But on the whole it 
tends to emphasize the function of preparation for actual 
and intelligent participation in civic life. Hence it is not 
strange that the upholders of this doctrine should now be 
particularly insistent upon being heard. 

The Moral Education Party and Its Platform. — The 
first variant of the sociological party to which attention 
may be called is the moral education group. This group is 
not internally unified ; it has various divergent aspects and 
programs. But on the whole its plans may be fairly repre- 
sented by the following : 

Always and everywhere it is important that men should be 
good. To be a good man — it is more than half the fulfilment of 
life! Better to miss fame, wealth, learning, than to miss right- 
eousness. And in America, too, we must demand not the mere 
trifle that men shall be good for their own sakes, but good in 
order that the life of the state may be preserved. A widespread 
righteousness in a republic is a matter of necessity. Where all 
rule all, each man who falls into evil courses infects his neighbor, 
corrupting the law and corrupting still more its enforcement. 
The question of manufacturing moral men in a democracy be- 
comes, accordingly, urgent to a degree unknown in a country 
where but a few selected persons guide the state. 

There is also special urgency at the present time. The ancient 
and accredited means of training youth in goodness are becoming, 
I will not say broken, but enfeebled and distrusted. . . . The 

1 Lewis: "Democracy's High School," pp. 6-8. 



380 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

hurry of modern life has swept away many uplifting intimacies. 
... It is no wonder, then, that in such a moral crisis the com- 
munity turns to that agency whose power is already felt benefi- 
cently in a multitude of other directions — the school. The cry 
comes to us teachers, "We established you at first to make our 
children wiser; we want you now for a pro founder service. Can 
you not unite moral with intellectual culture ?" ^ 

The Program of the Vocational Party. — This is the sec- 
ond variant of the sociological program. It takes two 
turns, one in the direction of vocational guidance, and the 
other in the direction of vocational education, properly so 
called. The program of the latter is again complicated by 
being confused with indiistrial education of many sorts, 
and the whole problem of vocational guidance is still rather 
obscurely hidden in psychology. But something of the 
common problem of the two aspects of this program appears 
in the following statement: 

In the shifting currents of social progress some institutions 
once powerful are left weakened, if not helpless, while other in- 
stitutions wax strong to meet the demands of the time. The 
homes of the urban industrial classes have not the moral influence 
over children exercised by the family life of the farmer; the 
church grips fewer members with its theological doctrines than it 
did a century ago ; the trades do less for their apprentices in the 
modem factory than they did when lodged in households; the 
press has more influence; libraries are more plentiful; and 
the school has grown to be a modem giant where once it was a 
puny babe. The same old institutional forces beat upon the 
nervous systems of men, but the relative distribution of their 
work has changed, and is changing. . . . 

Just now the shifting of vocational education from the field of 
industry to the school is the crucial problem of our school organ- 
ization. The schoolmaster is confronted with the task of dealing 
with a problem alien to his experiences and contrary to his tra- 

1 Palmer, "Ethical and Moral Instruction in Schools," pp. 2-5. 



CONCRETE RESULTS FROM HISTORY 381 

ditions. . . . The schoolmaster must grope for his solutions in the 
few established facts of his new case and build new methods, 
which will often be radical departures from all that his conserva- 
tive mind has known and revered in scholastic standards. In 
accepting responsibility for the vocational training of American 
children, the school plunges itself into a period of transition in 
which old ideals are futile and new ideals are but half -discovered. 
Clear thinking, the great need of the moment, is obscured by the 
controversies that inevitably arise when two sets of traditions, 
born of two separate institutions, are suddenly thrust together in 
a conflict which dulls tolerance, increases vehemence, and destroys 
poise.^ 

These last words are applicable to the whole present situ- 
ation, in which, however, not merely two sets of traditions 
are in conflict, but many sets, each claiming more or less a 
sort of ''apostolic succession" in the educational fulfil- 
ment of promise. 

Some More Specialized Parties. — We should be pro- 
longing this discussion unduly if we should set forth at the 
same length all other parties to the general educational 
discussion of to-day. But there are certain specialized 
groups of interested people, each with some rather definite 
part, or fragment, of a program, whom we must not omit 
from this list. Many of these are particularly emphatic in 
their efforts to attract public attention, but all of them 
have some real contribution to make to the general discus- 
sion; and what they have to offer must be considered as 
we come toward the working out of that more complete 
and adequate program which is to take the place of these 
discordant efforts in the education of the future democ- 
racy. We must note the work and the program of the 
kindergartners, with the additional reinforcement that this 
aspect of education has received in recent years through the 
work of Montessori and her followers. The religious edu- 

1 Snedden, "The Problem of Vocational Education," Introduction. 



382 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

cation group must be mentioned, with their program "to 
inspire the educational forces of our country with the re- 
ligious ideal, to inspire the religious forces of our country 
with the educational ideal, and to keep before the public 
mind the ideal of religious education and the sense of its 
need and value." We must also note the industrialists, 
most of whom are employers of labor who seem to want to 
make sure that the labor supply shall be neither curtailed 
nor be permitted to grow up too ignorant to be of service 
in industry ; the sex hygienists, who feel that they are fac- 
ing the "problem of the twentieth century"; and the 
social center party, with its broad doctrine that the "social 
center movement is buttressing the foundations of democ- 
racy." These, and others which might be enumerated, 
help to swell the output of written and spoken discussion 
that almost overwhelms us to-day. 

If we now add to these more important and minor par- 
ties those other partisans of habit and silence, the tradi- 
tionalists, who "don't know what all this argument is 
about" and who are largely content to have anything go 
on in the school, just so long as the schools themselves go 
on, we shall have a fairly complete picture of the present 
situation. The world is full of parties, each with its more 
or less specific cure for the evils of the age. Some of these 
parties recognize the partial character of their programs 
and are ready to cooperate with any and all who are seri- 
ously working for the more adequate program. But many 
are immersed in their own importance and have no thought 
of any cooperation. 

The Defect of this Partisanship. — The chief basis of 
this partisanship is at the same time its real defect. Of 
course this is not unusual. Most partisanships are thus 
based upon defects of analysis. Almost without exception 
the parties enumerated above stand upon some chosen 



CONCRETE RESULTS FROM HISTORY 383 

material of education; they advocate some particularly 
valuable type of knowledge or subject matter. This is 
truer of the larger historic parties than of the more spe- 
cialized modern ones. The majority of these latter are 
attempting to cure some specific evil in the common life, 
and they are addressing themselves to some functional 
aspects of the social situation, having only a secondary in- 
terest in their particular materials. But on the whole the 
major parties to the intellectual quarrels of to-day are 
quarreling about historic materials of education, and they 
are doing it with many of the same arguments that were 
used by their prototypes of the seventeenth century. They 
are distinctively to be called "materialists" in education, 
just as those seventeenth century partisans were. A 
chosen subject-matter is the basis of their organization and 
their fight ; and this is the chief defect of their position. 

For they are fighting in large measure as if psychology 
were still in the far future, as it was in the seventeenth 
century. In a sense, this is the case. Psychology adequate 
to the illumination of most of our problems is still very 
much in the future. But the discussion of educational 
problems can now be carried on in the actual light of at 
least some few psychological principles. It is only too 
true that educational psychology has still its major tasks to 
accomplish; especially, must its emphasis pass over from 
the purely structural and experimental phase to the social 
and creative phase. But some of this preliminary work has 
been done, and it is possible to determine the standing of 
an educator to-day by finding out to what extent his edu- 
cational discussions take into account the genuine develop- 
ments of structural and social psychology. Although the 
foundations in psychology are not complete, there are some 
genuine fundamentals upon which we may stand. We shall 
see more of this in another section. 



384 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Now it must not be assumed that though we have re- 
turned to the community, history has brought us nothing 
but this rather large muddle of warring sects, this seeming 
confusion. True, this muddle, this confusion of parties, is 
better than the deadly certainty of the folkways; we have 
achieved this one gain anyhow. History has broken 
through what Browning calls the ''ghastly smoothness" of 
life; it has "turned earth's smoothness rough." But more 
than this, we can here see some of the actual elements of 
the problem of education, whether of the community or of 
the individual. The folkways we have always with us, with 
their traditions, customs, and habits. We have the sophist, 
too, with his insistence upon living by impulse, immediate 
feelings, or half-grown opinion. And we have the propa- 
gandist, the follower of some outworn solution, who is too 
loyal to an old hope or to a radiant personality to allow 
his solution to decently die ; or who, perhaps, by his blind 
devotion keeps alive some fragment of doctrine that will 
serve the world's need in some larger synthesis in some 
later age. History has been a series of researches, a set of 
world-wide experiments into the hidden reaches of human 
nature. Many elements that must enter into the ultimate 
solution of the problem of education have been discovered, 
and these we have as the permanent gain from history. 
We have many false elements, also, and not a few blind 
alleys which claim to be thoroughfares. 

But the most important element in the whole problem 
still remains obscure — the element of method. Materials 
we have in plenty, even in confusion. But we do not know 
what to do with them. Educational research is now in the 
field of method. Psychology is the chief tool of this re- 
search ; but psychology is of so many sorts that we seem to 
be getting only more confusion from its work. On the 
other hand, the problem of education is of many sorts. 



CONCRETE RESULTS FROM HISTORY 385 

The community, the individual child, the child in the group, 
the varied materials that have come to us out of the past — 
these are all involved in the psychology of the case. The 
task of psychology looms so large, and it is so important 
that we get something of a right perspective of it out of this 
historical review, that it seems necessary to devote a whole 
chapter to the discussion. Accordingly we turn to the spe- 
cific statement of the present situation and the task of 
psychology. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

THE FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATIONAL PROBI^M OF THE 
PRESENT 

We have seen the constant tendency of the human mind 
to surrender all its achievements to the control of habit, 
custom, and tradition — the folkways of the group and the 
protection of fixed institutions. There is no denying this 
fact. Educational effort must recognize it, accept it, and 
make use of it. But correlative to this tendency there is 
another, though really a part of the same general mental 
movement — the tendency to turn every new discovery in 
the direction of method into some sort of educational mate- 
rial, i.e., to identify this new method with some special 
subject-matter and to block the doorway of escape from 
old materials with some new material, until it seems that 
the human mind must be essentially afraid of freedom 
and that it can only be happy when it has wrapped its 
powers round about with some sort of institutionalism, or 
buried them in some phase of materialism. 

The Meaning of this Fact.— Now, while there is no 
denying the fact that all living tends to establish itself in 
the forms of habit and custom, there are two things to be 
noted about this fact. First, this tendency does conserve 
what is developed, at least, the mechanical aspects of the 
development, so that whatever intelligence is possessed by 
individual or community may be freed for the task of con- 
tinuous production of larger values. And second, this 
tendency toward habit and custom does offer its own means 
of escape from itself. For there is involved in this tend- 
ency toward habit another fact of equal importance, viz., 

386 



THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 387 

the conflict of habits. For habits, customs, traditions, 
folkways, and institutions are not exclusive of each other. 
They overlap ; they compete ; they mutually contradict ; and 
they come into inevitable conflict. This is just as certain 
to happen as that they should exist at all. These conflicts 
offer the chance to escape. They are the crises, as we 
called them in an earlier section, out of which innovation 
arises; they stimulate inventiveness; they call out initia- 
tive. Out of these crises in tradition and custom science 
has arisen. Indeed, science has become the avowed pro- 
gram of this departure from custom and tradition. Science 
is the intellectual statement of the break from tradition and 
the growing results of that break as it endlessly renews it- 
self. On the social side, democracy is the avowed program 
of the break from custom and tradition. 

But even science tends to become materialistic and to 
set up completed results, classified materials, as its goal, 
just as democracy continually slips from its high purpose 
and takes refuge in traditionalisms. It would seem that if 
science is to escape from this materialism, it must keep to 
the spirit — the endless, the lastingly active search for 
truth. This keeping of the spirit of the search becomes 
more and more difficult as the results of the search, the 
materials of science, pile up, and pride of accomplishment 
comes in. Some scientists feel, even now, that science has 
come into a rather decadent condition. "The acceptance of 
the results of scientific work as constituting science is 
surely one of our grievous faults. For science is not clas- 
sified knowledge, — a complete thing; but rather classifica- 
tion or organization of knowledge, — an active process. If, 
therefore, we wish to rescue science from its present de- 
cadent condition, one of the first steps seems to be the 
recognition of this distinction. ' ' ^ That is to say, the cure 

1 Mann : "Science in Civilization and Science in Education," "School 
Rev.," Vol. XIV, p. 667. 



388 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

for this almost universally recognized evil is the replacing 
of the materialistic conception of science by the active, 
creative conception. In exactly the same manner our social 
processes tend to become consummated, to be finished. 
Democracy tends to become materialistic, i.e., to assume 
that certain historic institutions are essentially democratic, 
and that certain documents assure us our democracy, 
whether v^e take thought for it or not. Thus, among 
thoughtful people there is fear for both science and democ- 
racy. With reference to the latter, Jane Addams wrote 
some years ago, "The ideal of democracy, — 'a people rul- 
ing,' — the very name of which the Greeks considered so 
beautiful, no longer stirs the blood of the American youth, 
and . . . real enthusiasm for self-government must be 
found among the groups of young immigrants who bring 
over with every ship a new cargo of democratic aspira- 
tions. ' ' ^ And it has been pointed out by thoughtful 
scholars that the very successes of science in piling up great 
masses of assured facts will tend toward dogmatisms. 

Now the cure for these decadent tendencies in our democ- 
racy is assumed to lie in the redirection of our whole in- 
tellectual attitude toward political institutions. Criticism 
must take the place of docility, and reconstructive action 
the place of mere obedience. Eternal vigilance is not 
merely the price of liberty in the first place ; it is a part of 
the fixed cost of maintaining liberty forevermore. It is to 
be doubted whether there is any place for mere obedience in 
a democracy since democracy is grown out of the active 
cooperations of all its constituent members. But American 
democracy has cultivated, perhaps not unnaturally, a type 
of unthinking obedience and acceptance not unlike that 
expected of the subjects of old monarchies. De Tocque- 
ville more than sixty years ago called attention to this fac- 

1 Cf, "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets." 



THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 389 

tor in American life in his "Democracy in America." 
Professor Dewey has recently pointed out that the "Ameri- 
can conception of freedom is fundamentally incompatible 
with the doctrine of duty as that has developed in" cer- 
tain militaristic countries of Europe. The cure for de- 
cadent democracy must be more democracy, i.e., more in- 
telligence in the expression of our civic life. In like 
fashion the cure for decadent science must be more of the 
spirit of science, i.e., more active and creative intelligence 
at work in the world of knowledge, with less of the merely 
imitative, the merely repetitive, and the bookish. And this 
means that science must cut loose from the sciences and be- 
come the instrument of all aspects of human interest. 

What Does History Say of These Things? — Human na- 
ture does tend to commit all its accomplishments to the 
care of habit, custom, and institution. Moreover, it has 
been the tendency of history to identify accomplisher with 
accomplishment and to commit human nature itself to the 
care of the selfsame habit and finality of expression. Out of 
this has grown the doctrine that "human nature is essen- 
tially unmodifiable, " since its characteristics were fixed in 
the long ages of primitive unintelligence. But this doctrine 
seems to be just the fallacy which both science and democ- 
racy seek to avoid. Science and democracy both assume that 
life can become intelligent; that is to say, men can really 
learn to live on the general level of intelligent analysis and 
organization of life, and they are not condemned to live for- 
ever in the control of some old structure of habit. This 
does not mean, of course, that life can dispense with its 
great understructures of habit; but it does mean that the 
habitual element in human life shall be understvuctnre, and 
not the main accomplishment. Certainly, it means that it 
shall not be the final statement of life itself. But how is 
this element of habit to be made and kept understructure ? 



390 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Does not history show that habit and institution always 
conquer innovation, invention, and initiative ? What of all 
the protests that we have come upon ? Are they not all lost 
in the structures of institutionalism that now stand where 
once the protestaut raised his rebellious voice? Yes, in 
part; no, in great measure. Institutions have been made 
over, renovated, renewed, and turned to new purposes and 
goals. 

But more than this, history simply shows how such proc- 
esses have gone on in the past, and what must be avoided if 
the future is to take other lines of development. History 
does not necessarily repeat itself. In fact, in recent dec- 
ades history has not been repeating itself. The Panama 
Canal was dug, completed, and turned to successful opera- 
tion because history was kept from repeating itself, — the 
history of an earlier, prescientific day. The discoveries in 
medicine, hygiene, and sanitation are making possible a new 
distribution of the forces of civilization and the reclaiming 
of vast areas of useless earth. But this is possible in other 
than the material and external aspects of our living; it is 
possible with reference to the internal, the mental, and the 
social. Psychology will sometime certainly be able to do 
for these mental and social aspects of our living what sani- 
tation and hygiene are doing for the external and physical. 
Indeed, in some presentations hygiene includes both mental 
and pliysical aspects. And just as hygiene and sanitation 
showed us how the mistakes of the old days at Panama 
could be avoided, so psychology will tend to show us how 
the old mistakes in education can be avoided. But just as 
the task of the sanitary expert was a lasting one, or will be 
a lasting one, as long as work goes on in regions where dis- 
ease is possible, so the task of the psychological expert will 
be a lasting one as long as education goes on where igno- 
rance and mere habit are possible. The old disease-factors 



THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 391 

and conditions stood out before the Americans at Panama 
when they went there to work; but the great aim — an 
Isthmian waterway — also stood out before them. Hygiene 
and sanitation cleared away one and made the other pos- 
sible; or, at any rate, these showed the relationships be- 
tween the two. In education to-day the old habit and in- 
stitutional-conditions stand out before us as seemingly im- 
possible obstructions; but the great aim of democracy — an 
intelligent people ruling themselves and organizing a 
really human life for every member of the national life — 
also stands out before us. Psychology must do for us 
here what hygiene and sanitation did for us at Panama. 
Psychology must show us the relationships between this old 
world of habit, — the folkways of our history, — and this 
larger world of intelligence, — the protests of our history 
and the science of our own times. Let us see more defi- 
nitely just what that problem is. 

The Problem of Education. — Habit is the essential 
mechanism of our living, and to habit all recurrent activi- 
ties are committed, so that intelligence may be freed for 
other new and more important tasks. Habit does not exist 
for the sake of controlling the intelligence, nor to supplant 
the intelligence, but wholly to do the mechanical work of 
life, so that the intelligence may be free. But on the other 
hand, psychology is telling us that the intelligence is not a 
structure of the mind which will continue tg exist unused. 
This complicates the problem. The intelligence seems to be 
a function of the mind which appears in times of crisis to 
help in the readjustment that the crisis demands; intelli- 
gence seems to be a valuable instrument for certain func- 
tional aspects of experience. When any particular process 
of adjustment is completed, the whole matter is turned over 
to habit for its more effective control. Intelligence retires 
from the scene. If this new adjustment has been devel- 



392 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

oped out of an important phase of experience, it may con- 
tribute to science. New tools may be invented, new knowl- 
edges uncovered and organized, and science may be thus 
enriched. But when the intelligence retires from the scene, 
turning full control of the new mechanisms over to habit, 
the spirit of science also retires, leaving behind only some 
new knowledge which will probably in course of time be- 
come material for some curriculum. Now if this adjust- 
ment has had to do with actual social and civic concerns, 
the moment of reconstruction has probably involved a gen- 
uinely scientific consideration of social factors in which all 
old institutional prejudices have slipped away and social 
relationships have stood forth in something like naked real- 
ity. At such a time the spirit of democracy is present ; and 
if such an attitude of inquiry into social problems could be 
maintained, democracy would probably be the ultimate out- 
come. But when intelligence retires from the scene, sci- 
ence, the spirit of inquiry, retires also, and with these goes 
democracy, the hope of a natural, human life. In its place 
there is left only some new bit of social mechanism which is 
not unlikely to become in good time a further obstacle to 
the real establishment of democracy. There are individuals 
who have been scientists all their lives ; that is to say, they 
have kept alive the spirit of inquiry. Their spirit has 
known the religious quality expressed by a writer of old : 
"I count not myself yet to have attained: but one thing I 
do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching 
forward to the things which are before, I press on toward 
the goal." But this outcome was possible because life had 
come to be a problem in itself. That is to say, life was 
not merely made up of problems big and little ; life was it- 
self a continuous problem demanding continuous thought- 
fulness. May it not be said that the one hope of making 
an intelligent life on earth, a life whose social order shall 



THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 393 

be democracy and whose intellectual nature shall be science, 
depends upon so using our educational agencies that in- 
stead of making education an answer, or a series of an- 
swers, to problems, we should make it the means of pressing 
home upon all people the sense of life's problems? This 
will mean that the whole great complex of habit, custom, 
institution, organization, and stimulation which surrounds 
us shall come to us as a real world-problem (which it is to 
serious minds) of such lasting complications and uncer- 
tainties as to impose upon all our experiences the lasting 
problematic quality which is necessary to the production of 
thought; and out of this it will come to pass that the 
adaptive aspect of experience and the inventive function of 
thinking will be continuously in evidence, and hence over all 
of life will linger the fine glow of lasting, intelligent con- 
sideration. This is, when warmed to its task, science ! 

But is this the problem of education? This must be the 
result that our educational processes seek to secure, if we are 
to make sure of our democracy and our science. But this 
is a result that can never be secured by any program of edu- 
cation that bases itself upon materials of any sort whatso- 
ever. Science cannot secure the scientific attitude by feed- 
ing up youthful minds on the achieved results of science, 
i.e., classified knowledge. Democracy can find no more ef- 
fective way of destroying the active intelligence that is 
promised in the normal child, and that is essential to the 
continuity of genuine self-government, than by insisting 
that the prime material of civic education is civics of the 
bookish sort. This is not a quibble ; it is the statement of 
a tragic fact. It is the fundamental problem of education 
in a democracy; and its solution lies in the psychology of 
the intellectual processes as those processes appear in the 
active experiences of life. The problem of learning is very 
much less important, since it is a much later item in a nor- 



394 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

mal mental life. The stupid, tragic fact is that all too 
often the problem of intelligence is identified with the prob- 
lem of learning; hence the problem of intelligence remains 
obscured and unsolved, and the deadly process of cram- 
ming takes the place of a real process of education, while 
the teacher abdicates his function and becomes a mere pur- 
veyor of materials. 

Relations of this Problem to the History of Education. 
— We have seen the significance of these facts all through 
the long story of the world's education. The innovations, 
i.e., the reforms, in the history of education are almost 
pathetically numerous; and the educational parties of to- 
day seem to represent all these innovations of the past, 
keeping them alive and clamorous as particular schemes. 
For the fact is that practically all past innovations, though 
they may have begun with the intention of working intelli- 
gently, i.e., of attacking the prohlem of education, soon 
found themselves involved in the defense of some particular 
material; that is to say, they soon reached a finality, a 
solution, and in self-defense were compelled to stand by it. 
This means, of course, that for them the problem no longer 
existed, since they had found the solution. But it means 
much more. It means that their own intelligence had re- 
tired from the field, since, as we have seen, intelligence re- 
tires when the problem is solved. Thus another brave ef- 
fort fails, and the world once more sinks to the level of 
custom and habit. One of the most obvious illustrations 
of this tendency is seen in the gradual degradation of 
humanism into Ciceronianism. But practically all other 
materials have suffered the same fate. Even the psychologi- 
cal doctrines, which promised to open the way for the cre- 
ative activities of mind, have not escaped. Pestalozzi, 
Ilerbart, and Froebel — each and all became lost in the 
elaboration of certain materials which particularly illus- 



THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 395 

trated the application of their particular doctrines. So 
psychology, which should have been working out the con- 
ditions under which mind functions freely and creatively, 
becomes lost under the accretions of habit and surrenders to 
the demands of a fixed material. Not infrequently it ac- 
cepts the position of chief defender of the doctrines of the 
materialists by showing how adequately the chosen mate- 
rials serve the needs of mental development. 

To be sure, external pressures are sometimes brought to 
bear to secure these results. For example, Froebel 's earlier 
efforts to foster self-activity in the children of his kinder- 
garten were all too obviously democratic and were prophetic 
of possible disaster to existent institutions in autocratic 
Germany ; therefore the heavy hand of government soon put 
an end to all such nonsense. At other times the church 
has been overzealous in the same direction. At present 
conservative political forces in America seem to feel the 
dangers that lurk in an education that is too intelligent. 
Hence, for example, these forces are working for the estab- 
lishment of a type of industrial education that shall head 
off and prevent the establishment of a thorough system of 
vocational education which should include all the educa- 
tional agencies now at work. The great problems of states- 
manship in the future will largely revolve around the na- 
ture of our public education and its control. That is now 
clearly seen in England and it will soon be seen here. The 
fate of democracy is involved in the direction which our 
education takes. 

The Task of Psychology. — The clue to the educational 
problem of the present lies in psychology. To be sure, 
materials must be considered, and any educational process 
will involve materials; but the question of materials is not 
the dominant one, nor the important one. The problem is 
not even that which was stated by Pestalozzi as the "psy- 



396 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

ehologizing of the materials of education." From another 
point of view the structure of social order seems the most 
important aspect of education, and this is an important re- 
sult to be worked for. Herbart thought this "becoming 
gradually conscious of the moral order of the world" was 
the real goal of the process. But he conceived this moral 
order as being already in existence in a Platonic sense; 
hence his psychology has become formal and lifeless. 

Education involves the conception of an active process 
of creating experience and developing selfhood in each in- 
dividual member of the community. In this process the 
particular child is to be regarded not as the object of the 
process, as being worked upon by teachers, but as the sub- 
ject of the process, as gradually coming to "power on his 
own life and on the world." Democracy, as a social order, 
knows no fixed goals ; the tasks of democracy stretch before 
us endlessly. Science, as the method of the intellectual life, 
knows no final limits. The universe seems infinite, and the 
reaches of man's experience are beyond present comprehen- 
sion. Education in a democracy must conceive itself as the 
process by which the immature members of the community 
become ready to live in this democratic and scientific uni- 
verse, where freedom from old superstitions is being as- 
sured. They must be made ready to live socially, morally, 
creatively, constructively, and responsibly. Such an edu- 
cation difi'ers from the education with which we began this 
study as democracy differs from autocracy. Such an edu- 
cation must be true to the ideal — democracy; and it must 
use the means — science. And science here means psychol- 
ogy as the constant interpreter and guide, over and above 
all materials of whatsoever sort. 

Democracy sets forth an ideal of a social order in which 
there shall be no purely artificial barriers to the contacts 
of its members; in which there shall be broadest toleration 



THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 397 

and continuous attention to the possibilities of cooperative 
neighborliness and public-spirited citizenship. To be sure, 
many persons of the present social order, who have been 
trained in old, exclusive atmospheres and who find the 
ideal of democracy disturbing, will not welcome the exten- 
sion of that ideal tG the full region of education ; but on the 
whole, the world seems determined to achieve such an aim, 
if only for experimental purposes. Now the question be- 
comes: "Is this democratic ideal tenable from the stand- 
point of psychology? Does psychology hold out any hope 
of its possible realization?" The answer must be "No," 
if the older psychology, which underlay older social orders, 
be still accepted. Old aristocratic and autocratic political 
systems were based on an implicit psychology which as- 
serted that human beings (with the exception of those be- 
longing to the ruling classes) were passive in their vir- 
tues, but active in their viciousness; hence order must be 
imposed from above, the world must be carefully policed, 
and education must not go too far, lest vicious traits become 
intelligently vicious. Old economic doctrines were based 
on the same general psychology. It was held that man is 
naturally lazy and that he will work only when he is in 
danger of starvation. On such foundations, of course, the 
effort to build a democracy would be absurdly futile. 

But all such foundations have been discredited by the 
psychology that has grown out of the doctrines of evolu- 
tion. Man is just as active by nature as the rest of the 
universe; children are overflowing with activities. The 
task of education or of politics or of industry is not to get 
the individual to act, but rather to help him organize these 
overflow activities with which he begins life so that he may 
act wisely and well. This is the doctrine of psychology 
to-day. It transforms the whole face of education, and it 
makes possible an educational program which can take 



398 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

democracy as its goal and can use science as its means. 
Its goal is a society in which men are actively at work 
constructing a good life for all, and making sure that all 
have a chance to share that good life; its intelligence is 
kept actively alive by being engaged at the task of working 
out the endlessly changing conditions under which that 
good life for men becomes possible. But this psychology 
is the outgrowth of the evolutionary doctrine that action 
and experience precede thinking; that adjusting reactions 
are the basic factors in experience; and that thinking 
comes in at later, complicated levels to perform adjust- 
ments not possible to the mere mechanisms of simpler be- 
havior. Thinking thus becomes real in the solution of 
actual problems; in the working out of worthy aims and 
goals; and in the determinate organization of the proc- 
esses of experience as deliberate means for the realization 
of those selected goals. Thinking is not imposed upon ex- 
perience, as Plato taught, and as the school and other pre- 
existent institutions have echoed ever since. Thinking is 
the instrument of experience in its efforts to make a world 
of order and value. Thinking is science, — the spirit of 
science, the tool of science. But thinking is not life; it is 
the tool of life. 

Now there is such a psychology. It is active, rather than 
passive. It is voluntaristic, rather than intellectualistic. 
It is expressive, rather than primarily receptive. It is 
vital, rather than academic. It is found in men, rather 
than in books. It is social, rather than individualistic. 
It has to do with accomplishment and with activity, rather 
than with mere learning, but it makes learning an aid to 
accomplishment. It may come out of laboratories, but if 
so, it is only because it first went into the laboratories out 
of the world of action. It tells of the processes of real 
experience; it works out real motives; it deals with the 



THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 399 

urges of actual impulses ; it takes into account real desires ; 
it tells how we lay up real stores of living experiences, in- 
cluding knowledge, how we develop the powers of reflective 
thinking (if we do), and how out of all these aspects of 
experience the growing fact of personal selfhood gradually 
appears, molding all experiences into experience, and giving 
to life something of unity and integrity. 

Such a psychology is scarcely a science in its own right. 
It is probably, rather, a sort of handmaiden to all the sci- 
ences, including that practical science called the science 
of teaching. Such a psychology is especially the servant 
of the democratic ideal ; not, indeed, a slavish servant ac- 
cepting all the wild and weird desires of uncritical demo- 
cratic aspirations as final truth, but that helpful servant 
who lends her own technical knowledge for the criticism 
of the excessive and exaggerated modes of her master. 
Education for democracy depends upon the development 
of this more social and creative type of psychology, and 
also upon its use in analyzing the actual relationships of 
the child to the adult world and in stating the processes 
of their interaction. 

Such a psychology will be able to tear to pieces the as- 
sumptions of the folkway attitude, or of any other static 
conservatism. It will penetrate the dogmatisms of the old 
educational theories that always ended in some form of 
materialism, and it will tend to bring to an end the mate- 
rialistic partisanships and clamorings of the half-intelli- 
gent movements which we have noted in the last chapter. 
Out of this psychology will come a theory of education 
fitted to the expanding conceptions of our democratic life, a 
theory that will make education as thoroughly social, moral, 
practical, and vital as it was in the folkway community, 
while at the same time making it as intelligent as modern 
democracy and science demand and promise that it shall be. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE PRESENT AS A PART OF HISTORY 

With such a general historical survey and summary 
completed, we must take one last glance as we "swing out 
into the present." From such a survey we come into a 
present that is neither complete nor self-satisfied. We have 
heard the clamors of warring sects and parties; we have 
seen the evidences of work still to be done, ''the little 
done, the undone vast." History is not ended, for all 
these varied movements seem to be alive and to be strug- 
gling more or less intelligently, more or less bitterly, for 
their proper recognition. We have, as we may say, "ran- 
sacked the ages"; and we bring back some worthy gains, 
though perhaps not all that the hopes of the past, the as- 
pirations of the ages, have promised. Some goals have 
proved illusory, some hopes fallacious, and some purposes 
too difficult. It is not unlikely that we shall be compelled, 
soon or late, to recover through long and arduous effort 
whatever of real value we have lost along the way. 

What Have We Gained? — We may here enumerate only 
a few of the major gains. First, may we not say that we 
have gained the sense of the dramatic quality of history, 
that quality which makes fact stranger than fiction? Fact 
is stranger and more interesting than fiction when it is 
seen in its proper, natural, dramatic setting in the play of 
human hopes and purposes. Individuals, groups, nations, 
institutions, ideas, and systems of thinking — all these have 
played for a place in the world's life, and human destinies 
have turned on their failure or success. Men have put 

400 



THE PRESENT AS A PART OF HISTORY 401 

their hearts into history, into the making or marring of the 
human story, into the control of destiny. In the earliest 
ages such control was sought through magical means, 
through prayer, or other religious forms ; and always force 
has been used as a means of control. In the modern 
period the effort has been to use intelligence. The plot and 
the actors have changed, but human interest is at the 
heart of both plot and acting. The race has worked hard 
in its efforts to understand this seeming drift of experi- 
ence, and hopes have run high or fallen low. Men have 
done gallant deeds, shameful deeds, and colorless deeds 
during the long ages of repression. Men have risen to 
sublime heights of unselfish sacrifice and service, or have 
fallen to the lowest depths of disgrace. This has occurred 
in real history, not merely in the pages of romance. Soc- 
rates and Jesus are real characters in history, and though 
much of myth has gathered around each of them, especially 
the latter, yet the world cannot be too often reminded that 
both and each of them once lived. But "Attila the Hun" 
was a real character, too, and Catherine di Medici. His- 
tory has swung between these great extremes, and out of it 
has come the deeper understanding of our common human- 
ity. 

Second, we have caught some glimpses of some of the 
great factors that have helped to produce this dramatic 
quality. We have seen the habitual, the customary, the 
traditional aspects of human nature in full control of all 
the conditions of life in the primitive world ; we have seen 
the numerous protests against this folkway organization; 
we have seen this stationary attitude ally itself with all 
the economic, political, social, religious, and intellectual 
elements existent (at least above the surface) ; and work- 
ing with these we have seen it come to full conscious under- 
standing of itself in the magnificent structure of civiliza- 



402 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

tion that filled the world and the imaginations of men at 
the height of the Middle Ages. Over against all this we 
have seen the deeper impulses and energies of life and 
growth groping to expression in the full thoughts of Socra- 
tes, the human hopes of Jesus, the fresh blood and youth- 
ful mind of the Teutonic barbarians, and the almost innu- 
merable revolts of the modern world, until these find some 
more adequate organization in the general doctrine of 
social evolution in the nineteenth century. History has 
been the long struggle between these two tendencies in 
human nature — between habit, custom, and tradition on 
the one hand, and impulse, growth, change, and recon- 
struction on the other. Men have lived through every 
variant difference between these extremes. History that 
passes by these vivid contrasts, and the forces, passions, 
energies, and hopes that made and make them real, leaving 
us but the cold world of fact, is not real history, but only 
sterile scholarship gone wrong through fear of life. 

In the third place, we may have gained some glimpse of 
the relationships of means to ends in human history. We 
have come upon many aims ; history has been a long, long 
tragedy of ends unrealized, doubtless, in part unrealizable. 
Why is this true? Mainly because men have very slowly 
learned that aims do not get themselves enacted into reality 
merely through their own intrinsic values, or through the 
pious hopes of their advocates. The evolutionary doctrine 
has elaborated the general concept of mechanism as the 
clue to the understanding and control of the world of na- 
ture. That conception seems at first glance to be particu- 
larly hostile to ideals. But it is rather the real hope of the 
attainment of our human ideals, for it has taught us that 
our ideals and aims are not just the happy accidents of his- 
tory, or the results of pious hopes ; they are rather the ac- 
tualization of men's programs, and these programs can be 



THE PRESENT AS A PART OF HISTORY 403 

worked out, because the world can be depended upon. 
Nature, for the purposes of human life and for the realiza- 
tion of ideals, can be stated in terms of dependable 
mechanism. Nature is not erratic. At least, dependable 
mechanisms can be found in nature ; and these can be used 
for the accomplishment of ends desired, at least in so far 
as our desired ends can be stated in terms of these mechani- 
cal possibilities. Thus our aims can be actually assured. 
This is the significance of science — nature becomes orderly 
and humanity learns how to work through nature to the 
accomplishment of some desired purpose. This is a long, 
slow task, but little by little, as we learn how to state the 
more and more complicated mechanisms of the world, we 
learn how to control the conditions of living so as to make 
possible a life nearer to our hearts' desires. But out of 
this, and more than this, we have learned that ideals and 
aims do not realize themselves or come true ad hoc. Every 
ideal must establish its appropriate mechanism. If we 
want to reach a new ideal, we must develop a new mechan- 
ism. This we have not fully learned as yet. Accordingly, 
we have been going on in the old ways, attempting to 
organize an education for democracy by using the educa- 
tional mechanisms of a predemocratic, and even an anti- 
democratic, type of social order. History has been such a 
tragic story of defeated ends and aims because men have 
thought that ideals were largely self-realizing. But if 
ideals were self-realizing, they would also be self-eliminat- 
ing. It may be that the task of realizing a purpose is long 
and difficult ; but if we have built into its being the struc- 
ture of an adequate mechanism, we shall be sure of its en- 
during quality. Every aim or ideal that is realizable at 
all must have its appropriate means of realization, and the 
tragedy of the past will become the folly of the present if 
we do not learn how to make our gains secure by giving to 



404 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

our ideals and aims the permanence of the world itself in 
terms of effective mechanisms. 

But on the other hand, as we have seen in the folkways 
and all through our story, mechanism, in the form of habit 
or custom, is the most fatal of diseases if it goes too far or 
gets out of control. Science must keep ahead of its own 
mechanisms; intelligence must lead. The developed and 
developing machinery of the world must be kept at work in 
the beneficent service of humanity, and it must be kept 
flexible enough to yield to the continuous demands for re- 
construction. It is the old story. Life cannot get ahead 
without building up these mechanisms of habit ; and it can- 
not get ahead if it builds them up too securely. 

The Present and the Past. — Looking back over the ways 
we have come, we seem to see little but problems, unless it 
be unsuccessful solutions of those problems. From such an 
enterprise we seem to have come back with nothing definite 
and permanent. But that is a mistaken view, as has been 
pointed out in a preceding paragraph. In addition to all 
this there is one further consideration: we are trying to 
live in a democratic fashion, and in a democracy there are 
very few problems that have a final statement. Democracy 
is itself a permanent problem ; hence most of the problems 
that appear will be permanent problems whose solutions 
will change from age to age. In a democratic social order, 
wherein science is seeking to become the method of living 
and of control, a final answer is not the ideal goal. Prob- 
lems become more and more complicated. Their roots are 
in the folkways of the past and in our own habitual liv- 
ing, their stems are set in the deep and variant soils of his- 
tory, and their branches reach out beyond the vision of the 
present into the distant future. History digs up many 
problems, and settles few or none. Certainly, the history 
of education settles few or none. The task of solving 



THE PRESENT AS A PART OF HISTORY 405 

problems runs over into other phases of educational study, 
as we have seen, and into which it is not our province here 
to enter. But that which history demonstrates conclu- 
sively — that psychology must furnish the clue to the deter- 
mination of our educational problems — may not be lightly 
avoided. It is the application of the most complete devel- 
opments of psychology to the interpretation of the educa- 
tional task. What history contributes in the way of prob- 
lems, psychology must analyze and determine. 

One item more in this connection. Democracy can have 
no hope of ever escaping from the stress of problems. Or 
perhaps we should say that if democracy ever does so es- 
cape and lose the sense of facing problems, then intelli- 
gence will disappear, science will decay, and democracy 
will die. The very possibility of democracy turns upon 
the permanency of the problematic element in human liv- 
ing. Intelligence functions only in the presence of some 
problematic situation. Now we have seen in the course of 
this story how we have been swept far out from the certain- 
ties of the old folkways, with their unconsciousness of the 
forces, interests, and energies of life, into the uncertainties 
of the present, with its endless problems, its science, and its 
profound hopes of democracy. The problems of the past 
were in keeping the world secure, and of rendering it free 
from pain and problems. The great problem of the present 
is in keeping alive the realization of the fact that we live 
in a world of unstable equilibrium, in a world of problems, 
and that the way to meet problems is to recognize their 
existence, not to ignore them in the interest of a fancied 
security. Problems make democracy possible, since out of 
the existence of problems comes the larger intelligence 
which is able to deal with life in a democratic way. It is 
not fewer but more problems that we must have. The 
social and educational ideal of the past stated itself in 



406 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

terms of a final adjustment to a peaceful environment. 
The educational ideal of to-day is doing its best to recog- 
nize the continual complication of issues and practices in 
a democracy, and hence it attempts to state itself in terms 
not of ultimate finality of adjustment, but of that capacity 
for adjustment, that plastic adaptability, which will make 
possible the continuous reorganization of society and social 
institutions whatever may happen in the social order. 

One Final Problem. — Taking leave of all these factors 
and the gains that we have gathered, we must note one 
final fact. Education is a social process, and it has been 
such in every progressive period. But during periods of 
stagnation old practices cling and become formalized, until, 
as we have seen, at times education seems entirely cut off 
from connection with the vital currents of life. It becomes 
more and more remote from actual motives, more and more 
purely intellectual. This intellectual element has some 
excuse for existence, of course. In a complicated society 
where few children can have actual access to the realities 
of experience, either with physical objects and processes 
or with social factors, education must content itself with 
becoming a description of experience, instead of being ex- 
perience itself. The hope is that this description of experi- 
ence, taken from books for the most part, may help the 
childish mind to grow and live as if the experience had 
been real. In other words, in our complicated modern 
social conditions a conceptual statement of experience must 
take the place of a perceptual participation in real living. 
So it would seem, at any rate. But of course this substi- 
tution has its dangers. It becomes more and more intel- 
lectual, wordy, remote, "bookish," academic, unreal. A 
world of books, — a sort of Platonic world of preexistent 
ideas, — is set over against the world of actual experiences, 
and it becomes a sort of second-hand "academic" environ- 



THE PRESENT AS A PART OF HISTORY 407 

ment, which competes with the real world and the common 
social environment; so that, as Bergson says, the schools, 
doing their work in this second, rather unreal, environment 
of the books, tend not to nourish the real life of the child, 
but to build up upon that real life a second sort of mental 
structure, — which he calls a ' ' parasite soul. ' ' The cure for 
this would seem to be the actual substitution of the "con- 
versation of concrete individuals for the pale abstractions 
of thought. ' ' How is this to be accomplished ? 

Now, we have seen that all through history men have 
been asking for a more comprehensive treatment of human 
nature; and they have been trying to answer their own 
demand by setting forth from age to age whatever has been 
found of significance. Occasionally, these fragmentary de- 
mands and contributions find a comprehensive organization 
in reconstructive theory, — and a new age is ushered in. 
This happened in the field of general science with the pres- 
entation of the Darwinian doctrines. There is some evi- 
dence that we are on the eve of such a largely reconstruct- 
ive outlook in the field of education at the present time. At 
any rate, we seem to be on the edge of a great and, as yet, 
largely unknown land: some few explorers have gone into 
this land, and they report possibilities. The great war is 
making demands that can be answered only as we learn a 
new procedure in education; no, not an entirely new pro- 
cedure ; rather, as we complete the procedure that we have 
come upon here and there, in the course of this survey, — 
the procedure that is called democratic. "Experimental 
Schools" have been working in this direction for two dec- 
ades. The "Dewey Experiment" in Chicago and, more 
recently, the "Gary system" represent advance work, and 
hopeful progress. The task of education becomes, in Eng- 
land, the most important concern of statesmanship. The 
existence of that task is clear: but how shall it be accom- 



408 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

plished? Theories, in plenty, have come down to us, and 
with us, out of history ; criticisms of the traditional and the 
contemporary activities in education are continuous ; in the 
deep undercurrents of public opinion hopes of a more intel- 
ligent social order may be found : what seems lacking, — as a 
final clue? Is it not theory? Do we not need a large and 
comprehensive Theory of Education, that will bring into 
order and make ready for use all these confused masses of 
particular theory, old materials and common practice, whose 
endless details we have come upon in history, and whose 
more or less glaring outcomes we see all about us : a Theory 
of Education that will accomplish for this confused world 
of educational hope and effort what the Theory of Evolu- 
tion did for the confused world of biological speculation and 
observation in the middle of the nineteenth century? A 
theory that will tend to bring order out of confusion, intelli- 
gence out of chaos, and control out of these warring tradi- 
tional and accidental conditions ? 

For such a Theory of Education the materials have been 
slowly gathering; some of the preliminary work has been 
done, as we have seen; but not all. The background has 
not yet been fully cleared ; the theory of evolution has not 
been thoroughly applied to the general problem of educa- 
tional restatement ; science has not yet consented to devote 
its energies unreservedly to the task of human development, 
though its consent is not distant. The content of culture 
has not yet been freed from its old taint of predemocratic 
"humanism," which set the "liber" over against the "ser- 
vus." Platonic exaltation of reason, that grows out of ex- 
perience, above the experience that produces it is still 
educational "good form," Conceptions of "human na- 
ture" which justify on grounds of "native endowment" 
gross abuses of "human nature" which are based wholly in 
survivals dating from remote autocratic pasts are still re- 



THE PRESENT AS A PART OF HISTORY 409 

vered. One psychology for the "cultured" and another for 
the "proletariat" is still the rule. We do not yet see edu- 
cation comprehensively as it was enacted comprehensively 
in the primitive folkways : the mediation of the content and 
the spirit of the life of the group to the growing members 
of the future group. Such a seeing, — such a theory, — will 
set forth the educational problem of to-day as a community 
problem in the old sense; but the content of modern life is a 
moving content ; and the spirit of the modern community is 
a changing element. The theory that we need will hold 
science and democracy as its central terms; and it will 
define science as the living spirit of inquiry reverently 
working in the service of the good life; and it will define 
democracy as that only sort of social organization in which 
science can find itself permanently at home. 

And so we see that the history of education is not ended. 
In a sense, as a really conscious process it is only largely 
beginning. Its largest task, to date (unless it was the task 
accomplished by Socrates) lies just ahead of us. Here, as 
almost nowhere else, there is need of students. Here there 
is chance for constructive scholarship. The permanent, and 
therefore continuously changing, task of a democratic civ- 
ilization will be to assure itself that its intrinsic aims and 
purposes are not being defeated by the failures of its edu- 
cational processes to measure up to the high necessities of 
the age. Democracy, the very antithesis of the folkway 
spirit, is assured only in the assurance of a democratic edu- 
cational process. If this is secured, all is secure ; if this is 
defeated in the schools, all is defeated. The schools are 
either the hope of democracy or they are the defeat of de- 
mocracy. Which they shall be remains for us to help de- 
termine; and for some future history of educational de- 
velopments to record. 



APPENDIX 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL, SUGGESTIONS 

This brief bibliography is offered as the basis of further work 
in this field. For the student of the history of education, ac- 
quaintance with the standard works on that subject is desirable. 
Those are, in brief: 

Graves, "A History of Education"; 3 vols. New York, 1909- 

13. 
Monroe, "Text-Book in the History of Education." New York, 

1905. 
Parker, "History of Modem Elementary Education." Boston, 

1912. 

The standpoint from which the present volume is written is, 
however, somewliat different from that of these books. The near- 
est approach to it is that of — 

Davidson, "A History of Education." New York (Seribners), 
1907. 

But the anthropological point of view was not yet clearly estab- 
lished when Davidson wrote, so that his book does not do full 
justice to the problem of origins; and it compresses the psyclio- 
logical discussions of the modern period into a few brief chaptei'S. 
A complete bibliography of the history of education from the 
standpoint of the present volume would contain very wide selec- 
tions from all tbe fields of human interest. There are offered 
here only a selected few of the many books which have helped to 
form the theory of interpretation and to give the foundations 
of fact underlying this presentation. It was desirable to make 
this list brief, because overextended lists of readings are dis- 
couraging. Hence, in most cases but two references are given. 
One of these is (more or less definitely) historical and, if possible, 
contemporary material; the other is critical. The divisional 
numbers in the list correspond to chapters of the book. 

410 



APPENDIX 411 

1. 
Kidd, "Savage Childhood." London. Black. 1906. 
Sumner, "Folkways." Boston. Ginn. 1907. 
Thomas, "Source Book for Social Origins." University of Chi- 
cago Press. 1909. 

2. 
Boas, "Mind of Primitive Man." New York. Macmillan. 1911. 
King, "Social Aspects of Education," Ch. 2. New York. Mac- 
millan. 1912. 

3. 
Spencer, "Education of the Pueblo Child." Columbia Univ. 

Press. 1899. 
Wallis, "Sociological Study of the Bible." Univ. of Chicago 
Press. 1912. 

4. 
Mahaffy, "Old Greek Education." New York. Harper. 1882. 
Monroe, "Source Book in the History of Education," pp. 1-50. 

New York. Macmillan. 1910. 
Tucker, "Life in Ancient Athens." London. Macmillan. 1912. 

5. 
Dewey & Tufts, "Etliics," Chs. 4, 5, New York. Holt. 1908. 
Grant, "Greece in the Age of Pericles." London, Murray. 

1909. 
Monroe, "Source Book." Pp. 51-109. 

6. 

Aristophanes, "The Clouds." 

Robinson, "The New History," Lecture VIII. New York, Mac- 
millan. 1912. 

Sumner, "War and Other Essays," Especially, "The Absurd 
Effort to Make the World Over." Yale University Press. 
1911. 

7. 
Davidson, "Education of the Greek People," pp. 78-102. New 

York. Appleton. 1894. 
Grote, "History of Greece," Vol. 4, Ch. 46. London. Murray. 

1907. 



412 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Plato's "Dialogues: The Sophists; Euthydemus; Protagoras." 

8. 
Monroe, "Source Book," pp. 116-122. 
Plato's "Dialogues: Phaedo, Crito, The Apology," 

9. 
Nettleship, "Theory of Education in the Republic of Plato." 

University of Chicago Press. 1906, 
Plate, "The Republic," Books 2-7. 

10. 
Davidson, "Aristotle and the Ancient Educational Ideal." New 

York. Scribnors. 1910. 
Monroe, "Source Book," Chapter VI. 

11. 

Kingsley, "Alexandria and Her Schools." London. 1854, 
Sandys, "History of Classical Seholarsliip," Vol. I, Chs. 8, 9, 
Cambridge University Press. 1906. 

12, 

Fowler, "City-state of the Greeks and Romans," Chs. 7-11, New 

York. Macmillan. 1911. 
Monroe, "Source Book," pp. 327-451. 

13. 

Plutarch's "Morals." 

Taylor, "Ancient Ideals," Vol. I, Ch, 13, New York. Macmil- 
lan, 1913, 

14. 
Harnack, "What is Christianity ?" Part I. New York. Putnams. 

1901. 
The New Testament: Gospels according to Mark and Luke. 

15. 

Adams, "Civilization During the Middle Ages," Ch. 3. New 

York. Seribners. 1911, 
Taylor, "Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages," Chs. 5, 6. 

New York, Macmillan. 1911, 



APPENDIX 413 

16. 
Robinson, "Readings in European History," Vol. I, Chs. 2, 3, 

8. Boston. Ginn. 1904, 
Taylor, "The Mediaeval Mind," Chs. 6-8. London. Macmillan. 
1911. 

17. 
Emerton, "Mediaeval Europe." Boston. Ginn. 1894. 
Robinson, "Readings in European History," Vol. I, Chs. 9, 15-20. 
Taylor, "The Mediaeval Mind," Vol. 2, Chs. 34-43. 

18. 
Bury, "History of the Freedom of Thought." New York. Holt. 

1913. 
Osbom, "From the Greeks to Darwin." New York. Macmillan. 

1908. 

19. 
Cheyney, "Industrial and Social History of England," Chs. 2-6. 

London. 1912. 
Lea, "History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages," Vol. I, Chs. 

2-14. New York. Harpers. 1908. 

20. 

Robinson and Rolfe, 'Tetraxeh, the First Modem Scholar and 
Man of Letters." New York. Putnams. 1909. 

Whitcomb, "Source Book of the Italian Renaissance." New 
York. Longmans. 1903. 

2LA. 
Beard, "The Reformation of the 16th Century in Its Relation to 

Modem Thought and Knowledge." London. 1883. 
White, "History of the Warfare of Science with Theology." 

New York. Appleton. 1910. 

2LB. 
Bacon, "On the Advancement of Learning." 1605. 
libby, "The History of Science." Boston. Houghton Mifflin. 
1917. 

21. C. 
Ostrogorski, "Democracy and the Origin of Political Parties," 
Vol. I. New York. MaemiUan. 1908. 



414 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

Rousseau, "The Social Contract." 1762. 

21. D. 
Beard, "The Industrial Revolution." London. 1901. 
Ogg, "The Economic Development of Modem Europe," Part I. 
New York. Macmillan. 1917. 

22. 
Lankester, "The Kingdom of Man." New York. Holt. 1911. 
Weyl, "The New Democracy." New York. Macmillan. 1912. 

23. 

Acton, "Cambridge Modem History," Vol. I, Chs. 1, 2. New 

York. Macmillan. 1912. 
Williams, "The Beginnings of Modem Science." New York. 

Goodhue Company. 1909. 

24. 
Acton, "Cambridge Modem History," Vol. I, Ch. 16. 
Woodward, "Desiderius Erasmus." Cambridge. University 
Press. 1904. 

25. 
Bacon, "The New Atlantis." (After 1620.) 
Comenius, "The Great Didactic, etc." Written 1632; pubhshed 
1849. 

26. 
Bacon's "Novum Organum." 1620. 

Nichol, "Francis Bacon, his Life and Philosophy," (two parts). 
Edinburgh. Blackwood, 1902. 

27. A. 
Milton, "Tractate on Education." 1644. 
Rabelais, "Gargantua" and "Pantagmel." 1533-35. 

27. B. 

Chesterfield, "Letters." London. 1774. 

Montaigne's "Education of Children." New York. Appleton. 

1899. 

27. C. 
Monroe, "Comenius and the Beginners of Educational Reform." 

New York, Scribners. 1907. 



APPENDIX 415 

Quick, "Richard Mulcaster's Positions." London. Longmans. 
1888. 

28. 

Adamson, "Educational Writings of John Locke." New York. 
Longmans. 1912. 

Judd, "Psychology of the High School Subjects," Ch. 17. Bos- 
ton. Ginn. 1915. 

29. 
Parker, "History of Modem Elementary Education," Chs. 8-10. 

Boston. Ginn. 1912. 
Rousseau, "Emile." 1762. 

30. 
Rogers, "Student's History of Philosophy," pp. 415-27. New 

York. Macmillan. 1908. 
Wallace, "Kant," Ch. 10. Edinburgh. Blackwood. 1911. 

31. A. 
Parker, "History of Modem Elementary Education," Chs. 13-16. 
Pestalozzi, "Leonard and Gertrude." 1781. 

3LB. 
Dewey, "Democracy and Education," Ch. VI. New York. Mac- 
millan. 1916. 
Herbart, "Outlines of Educational Doctrine." 1835. 

31. C. 
Froebel, "Education of Man." 1826. 

Ham, "Mind and Hand." Cincinnati. American Book Co. 
1900. 

32. 

Chambers, "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." 1846. 
Crampton, "The Doctrine of Evolution." New York, Columbia 
University Press. 1911. 

33. 

Mann, "Science in Civilization and Science in Education." 

School Review, Vol. 14. Pp. 664-70. 
Spencer, "Education." (Before 1860.) 



416 DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 

34. 
Dewey, "Democracy and Education." 

Martin, "Evolution of the Massachusetts State School System." 
New York. Appleton. 1908. 

35. 
Cubberley, "Changing Conceptions of Education." Boston. 

Houghton Mifflin. 1909. 
Munroe, "New Demands in Education." New York. Double- 

day-Page. 1912. 

36. 
McDougall, "Introduction to Social Psychology," Chs, 2, 3, 7-9. 

Boston. Luce. 1909. 
Thomdike, "Educational Psychology," three vols. New York. 

Teachers College. 1913. 

37. 
Dewey, "Schools of Tomorrow." New York. Dutton, 1915. 
Hart, "Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities." 
New York. Macmillan. 1913. 



INDEX 



Alexandrian Age, 100 ff 
Anselm, 225 
Apperception, 320 f 
Aristotle, 10, 95-99, 150 f, 166 
Athens, 46 ff 

Bacon, 252, 255-261 
Barbarian invasions, 134, 137- 
144 

Certainty, 13, 28, 51. 54 f, 77. 97, 
117 f, 146-149, 176 f, 384 

Chivalry, 154 f 

Christianity, 120-136, 162, 215 ff 

Cicero, 112, 246 ff 

City life, 170 

Classics, 184 ff. 265-9, 375-6 

Comenius, 251 ff. 281 f 

Common life, 62, 102-3, 115, 138, 
163, 215 f, 217 

Community, Chs. 1, 2, p 371 ff 

Conceptualism, 176 

Conservatives, 59-63 

Crisis, 8 ff, 52. 54 ff, 64 f 

Custom, 54, 63, 65, 71 ff, 124 f, 
142, 183 

Dante, 99, 156 

Democracy, 11. 60, 103, 139 f, 

163 f, 187, 206, 209-15, 224- 

32, 358 ff, 400-409 
Democracy in education, 361-72 
Dewey, 326. 407 
Discipline, 359 ff 

Ecclesiasticism, 172 f 
Emotions, 181 ff 
Encyolopedism, 249 ff 
Ephebic Oath, 49 



Erasmus, 248, 267 
Evolution, 28, 337-346 
Evolution in education, 342 ff 

Fatherland, 84 f, 88 

Folkways, 5 ff, 10 ff, 13, 17 ff, 21, 

26. 32, 45, 50 ff, 64, 72 ff, 91, 

107 ff, 126, 194 
Freedom. 11, 84, 195, 197, 205 
Froebel, 327-35 
Frontier, 165, 174 ff, 177 f 

Galileo, 11 
Gary System, 407 
Greco-Roman. 110, 145 
Greece, 45 ff, 183 
Group life, 4 ff 

Growth, 75, 123 f, 133 f, 130, 140- 
43, 179 f, 187, 229, 291-99 

Habit, 54, 63, 65, 71 ff, 124 f, 

142, 183 
Hebrew education, 37 ff, 115 f 
Herbart, 317-26 
Heresy, 171 
High School, 26 
History, 28, 58. 400-407 
Human Nature, 57 
Humanism, 184, 242-48 
Huxley. 53. 352 f 
Hypothesis, 83, 87, 97, 145 

Ideas. 67. 73 ff, 85 ff, 95 f, 178 

Idols, 259 

Individual, 22 ff, 57 f, 64 f. 67 f. 
72, 78. 89. 121. 135, 139, 142, 
1.55, 162. 179 ff, 187, 192 ff 

Industrial Revolution, 217-23 

Initiation. 23 ff 



417 



418 



INDEX 



Institutionalism, 124, 143 
Intellectualism, 89 f, 114, 133 
Inventiveness, 3, 144 

Jesus, 122 flf 

Kant, 301-308 
Kindergarten, 328 ff 

Locke, 253, 285-90 
Luther, 11, 190 flf 
Lyric Poetry, 55 

Materialism in education, 262- 

282 
Mechanism of the social order, 

118-121 
Medievalism, 12, 145-157, 162, 

225 
Medieval Universities, 153 
Method, 36-38, 47 flf, 65, 76, 89 f, 

104, 107, 112, 118, 127, 131, 

185 ff, 226, 240, 257 ff, 276 ff, 

319 ff, 329 ff, 384 ff 
Militarism, 46 ff, 108 ff. 111 
Milton, 267 ff 
Monastic education, 152 ff 
Montaigne, 271 f 
Mysticism, 171 

Nationality, 163, 169 
Naturalism, 291 ff 
Nominalism, 173 ff 

Observation, 96-7 

Oriental education, 30-41, 108 

Pansophism, 240 ff 
Partisanship, 375-83 
Pestalozzi, 310-17 
Petrarch, 181 
Plato, 78, 83-93 



Political order, 6, 77, 208-17 
Priestly dominance, 47 
Printing, 176 
Protestantism, 191 tf 
Psychology, 384 f, 386-99 

Rabelais, 267 
Eatke, 280 
Realism, 173 ff 
Reformation, 163, 190 ff 
Religious influences, 25 ff, 47, 

103, 115 
Renaissance, 179 ff 
Revival of Learning, 182 f 
Revolution, 167, 208-17, 241 
Rome, 105, 107-113 
Rousseau, 291-99 

Saracens, 165 ff 

School, 19, 22, 36, 48, 75, 104, 

108, lllff 
Science, 11, 28, 96 ff, 103, 183, 

197-208, 257 ff, 347 ff 
Scientific method in education, 

355-57 
Sects, 101, 374 ff 
Secular Ideals, 172 f, 196 
Social world. 181 
Socrates, 68, 70-79 
Sophists, 60, 64-69, 71 
Sparta, 46 ff 
Spencer, 348-52 

Theory, 49 f, 53, 67, 309 f ' 
Thomas Aquinas, 99, 155 f, 226 

Unconscious education, 19 ff 
Universities, 166 



Vernacular, 171 ff 
Vittorino de Feltre. 243 
Vocational education, 
380 ff 



23-26, 



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